


Samizdat

by zuzeca



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Mythology/Religion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassination Plot(s), Casual Sex, Clubbing, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Extremely Dubious Consent, Felching, Government Conspiracy, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Intrigue, Kidnapping, M/M, Mpreg, Other, Public Sex, Rough Oral Sex, Sexual Assault, Sticky Sex, Withdrawn Consent, Writer's Block
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:27:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 36,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzeca/pseuds/zuzeca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ceremony meant to demonstrate the submission of the Prime to all Cybertron has unintended consequences when a certain miner from Tarn is selected to participate...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So a while back, I posted a [a meme response](http://lyresnake.tumblr.com/post/60910366793/good-grief-very-sorry-it-took-so-long-to-reply-to) on Tumblr which requested, among other things, that I make up an AU scenario of my choice for the requested pairing. I replied, admittedly perhaps without thinking things through, something involving lotteries and rituals of symbolic submission and the first time Megatron and Optimus meeting being when they're forced to have public sex in front of all of Cybertron. The idea was...surprisingly popular and I couldn't get it out of my head. I have no words, gentle readers. I hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> Chapter betaed by MlleMusketeer.

“I’m telling you, _now_ is the time,” said Megatron. “With Nominus Prime dead, we’ve been handed an unprecedented chance. If we can get a large enough movement behind us, the new Prime may listen.” 

“You’re fooling yourself,” snorted Impactor. “Every Prime is the same. Elite slag-suckers the whole lot of them. Why would they want to upset a system that’s working for them?”

“But this one is different,” said Megatron earnestly. “It’s unheard of, for the Matrix to reject a candidate, but that’s exactly what happened. They stuck the blasted thing in Zeta’s chest and it _didn’t take_. What’s more, it rejected every candidate they offered, except one. And he wasn’t even supposed to be there.”

“Senator’s consultant walking through the halls and gets chosen by the Matrix is a plot from a holovid, not something that actually happens.”

Setting aside his cup, Megatron leaned forward. “The Senate’s keeping most of the information under wraps, but there are strong rumors that he’s a mid-caste bot, not an elite. The middle castes aren’t as curtailed as we are, but they’re still subject to the functionist laws. He may be sympathetic to our cause.”

“Well maybe you can shout your question while he’s getting fragged in the Grand Imperium. I’ve always wanted to see it live.”

Megatron scowled. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. We’re a modern society. How do we expect to move beyond the caste system if we’re still practicing that barbaric ritual?”

“Barbaric maybe, but still slagging entertaining. Facing holovids aren’t exactly cheap, seems more than fair that the government would cough one up every few megavorns. Takes the mind off the drudge and toil, you know?”

Megatron sighed. “I don’t know why I bother.”

“Because your spark’s glitched and you think you’re some kind of philosopher-poet,” said Impactor dryly. “Just sit back and enjoy the show.” He tossed back the rest of his energon and indicated the vidscreen on the far side of the bar. “They’re running the lottery. Who knows, maybe it’ll be a minibot. Now _that_ would be entertaining.”

Megatron gave him a sour look and picked up his cup once more. The random number generator flickered at the top of the screen as the newsbot chattered excitedly. Ignoring the hubbub, Megatron retrieved his datapad from where Impactor had carelessly tossed it, fished his stylus out of subspace and reread a passage of his treatise, pausing to fix a minor bit of punctuation. Not that it mattered, at this rate he doubted anyone would ever read it—

“It’s a miner!” howled someone across the bar. “A regular old ore-pusher! Oh Primus, this is gonna be good!”

“A _hick_ ore-pusher,” cackled another bot. “Look at that serial prefix. Poor slagger’s from Tarn.”

Impactor kicked him. Frowning, Megatron looked up. “What is it? I told you I don’t care about that barbaric—”

Impactor gave him an unpleasant smile. “Well, you might want to _start_ caring, because they just called your number.”

Megatron stiffened, optics jerking in the direction of the vidscreen. Impactor was drunk; surely he must be mistaken…

But no, glowing in red, damning letters across the top of the screen was the alpha-numeric designation Megatron had carved into his memory core from the day of his forging: _D-163428766_. And beside it was a tiny image, taken on the day he entered the mines, his orange-red optics staring balefully out of the screen, the picture cropped so small that it cut off the edges of his helm.

Impactor patted his frozen hand with exaggerated sympathy. “Well if that doesn’t beat all. Looks like you’re gonna get a chance to ask the Prime in person.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I believe there’s been a mistake,” said Megatron, eyeing the enormous bodyguards that framed the bot in the doorway of his little housing unit.

“No mistake,” said the bot, his elaborate helm fin quivering as he cast a disdainful glance over the meager flat. “Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.”

“Er, not that I’m not flattered, but I’m afraid I can’t do this. Can you run the lottery again—?”

The bot’s expression grew more brittle. “Senator Decimus, and no we cannot. Ninety-eight percent of Cybertron’s population saw that broadcast. They are expecting a show, and you will give them one. You are coming with us.”

Megatron opened his mouth to protest once more and the guards shifted restlessly. Closing his mouth he cleared his vocalizer and said, “I’ll be just a moment.”

He left the door open, lest they think he was trying to escape and retrieved his datapad, tucking it away into his subspace. 

Perhaps Impactor was right and he could wrangle some measure of good from this madness.

Even with the guards, they made barely a ripple in the streets of Iacon. Megatron kept close to Decimus’s vehicle mode and wondered morosely if they planned on having him melted down for scrap once his task was completed.

The Grand Imperium comprised only one level of the massive structure. Decimus marched them past the elaborate domed structure and into a large lift which carried them into the upper levels, ones which Megatron had never seen even in documentaries and histories of the Senate.

The housing chambers for the Prime.

He was ushered into a comfortable, well-lit room, occupied by several other bots that straightened or rose at the sight of them. Other Senators he guessed, by the brightness of their paint and the air of superiority which blanketed the room.

“So,” said one, scowling at Megatron from under bright crimson fins which enhanced his optical ridges. “This is the miner.”

“Mind your manners, Proteus,” said another, marked with bright blue and gold. He inclined his head to Megatron. “I am Senator Shockwave, thank you for coming. May I ask your designation?”

“Don’t you know already?” said Megatron, wary.

“Yes,” said Shockwave bluntly. “But I find it more polite to ask.”

“Megatron. Megatron of Tarn.”

“Ah, the ‘tron’ from ‘Electronic’ I presume?”

Megatron shook his head. “Neutron,” he said, emphasizing the pertinent glyph.

One of the other Senators snorted, “Lofty name for an ore-pusher.”

Megatron’s mouth tightened. Shockwave frowned. “There’s no need to be rude,” he said. “The Senate owes you a debt of gratitude for participating in the ceremony.”

“Your employees make a compelling argument,” said Megatron, optics sliding over to where the guards still loomed by the door “though I must express my extreme reservations.”

“Why?” said yet another Senator, amused. “Your equipment broken?”

Megatron stiffened. “I have no wish to take part in a—” he bit off the sentence before he said something which might land him in prison. “It does not sit well with me to take what is not freely offered,” he gritted finally.

The bot raised an optic ridge. “It is being freely offered.”

“By the one actually involved.”

“The Prime’s willingness in this matter is not your concern,” said Proteus. “You will receive your instructions and you will carry them out. Deviance will not be tolerated.”

“I am not a—”

“Enough,” said Shockwave, his voice cutting through the rising tension. “I will see that our guest is informed of his duties and is in place at the proper moment. The rest of you need not trouble yourselves.” He cast a significant look at Proteus. “Is that acceptable?”

“Very well,” said Proteus, grudging. “I have more important matters to attend to than this foolishness.”

Shockwave nodded. “I shall see you all later.” He held up a hand as one bot opened his mouth. “And before you ask, Sigil, I have the relevant datapad. Just as I had it when you asked me five breems ago.”

Sigil nodded and followed the other Senators out. Shockwave sighed and dropped into a seat, his plating clanking.

“Come,” he gestured to the area beside him. “Sit, have some energon. This is going to take a while.”

Megatron seated himself gingerly and accepted the cup that was pushed his way. The energon inside glowed a light, delicate pink and fizzed in his intake. Suppressing the urge to cough, he set it aside and looked back at his host. Shockwave was watching him, an unreadable expression on his face.

“I make it a point to not pre-judge,” said Shockwave. “But I admit you are not quite what I expected.”

Shockwave wasn’t quite what Megatron had come to expect from an elite politician either, but he did not mention that. “How so?”

Shockwave toyed with his cup in the easy manner of one who’d never had to worry overmuch about spilled energon. “I worried,” he confessed at last. “I have a great deal of personal interest in this particular Prime.”

Understanding dawned. “You’re the Senator who brought in the consultant.”

Shockwave nodded. “His designation is, or was rather, Orion Pax. A new police captain from Rodion. He was my contact within the police force and that rare creature that some claim doesn’t exist.”

“And what is that?”

Shockwave’s mouth quirked: “A security officer who doesn’t abuse his power.”

A tiny glimmer of hope flared in Megatron’s spark, but he remained silent.

Shockwave studied him, his field even. “Orion is strong and resilient, and self-aware enough to know that our society is rotting from within. If there is any bot capable of bringing about positive change from within the Senate, it is him. But this was also an unasked-for burden. I may not be able to protect him from the responsibilities of his position, but I will not see him abused.”

“Then call off the ritual,” said Megatron.

Shockwave sighed. “One of the more distasteful lessons of politics is having to pick one’s battles. This is an important act in solidifying the legitimacy of a new Prime, not in the eyes of the Senate, but those of Cybertron’s people.” His optics locked with Megatron’s. “Will you do this with the knowledge that you are helping us take the first few steps towards a society where one’s form does not determine, and by extension limit, their function?”

Megatron regarded him. “Is this some sort of bribe? Cooperate and you’ll see about drafting some anti-functionist legislation?”

“No,” said Shockwave impatiently. “This is the request of a friend. The ritual is one of symbolic submission to all of Cybertron. It is intended to demonstrate that the Prime, at his core, is only a bot, as we all are. It is not supposed to be an act of humiliation.”

“You’re afraid that I will hurt him.”

“Will you?”

“No,” said Megatron, his voice hard. “What do you take me for?”

Shockwave smiled slightly. “A bot with integrity.”

Megatron scowled. “What would you have me do?”

“Be good to him,” said Shockwave simply. “He has a good spark, and I think, for all his courage, for all he will not say it, that he is as frightened as you are.” 

The datapad felt heavy in Megatron’s subspace. “I will do my best.”

Shockwave nodded and removed a datapad from his own subspace. “Here, an itinerary of the ritual stages, and a summary of the guidelines and restrictions.”

Megatron accepted the pad and began to scan over it. “We aren’t allowed to speak?”

“A measure to prevent the ritual being used as a platform for petitioning the Prime.”

Megatron frowned. “And this ‘only basic interfacing contact shall take place between involved parties, namely engagement between spike and valve mods’? That’s barbaric.”

“Thankfully, that stricture is non-critical,” said Shockwave. “I doubt anyone except Sigil would complain if you violated it. Most of the pertinent sub-clauses are for the Prime. He can’t overload before you get your spike in him.” He pinched his nasal ridge between two fingers. “You on the other hand, can get off as many times as you like. At the risk sounding clinical, I’d recommend you do so. The two of you will be under the microscope. With that much pressure, it may take some work to bring Orion to overload.” 

“Are you speaking from experience?”

Shockwave raised an optical ridge. “No,” he said mildly. “But I find it interesting that you would care.”

Megatron clamped his mouth shut and did not answer. Scrolling rapidly through the rest of the datapad, he committed the rest of the clauses to memory, protocols regarding everything from positioning during the act to a tiny sub-clause instructing him to withdraw following completion, in order to show the Grand Imperium their new Prime’s valve stained with his fluids.

His spark gave an uneasy squirm within him. 

“Do you have any other questions?”

Megatron shut off the datapad. “What is his designation?”

Shockwave’s optics brightened. “Optimus.”

Megatron nodded. “I am ready.”

Shockwave cocked his head and gave Megatron a long look. “I’ve never been particularly religious,” he said. “But sometimes I like to think Primus knows what he’s doing.”

Megatron opened his mouth to reply and froze as a tiny datapacket buffeted against his systems. Cautious he opened it and discovered a long string of numbers attached to a brief message.

_“A secure comm. line to Optimus. Prove to me you deserve this.”_

Shockwave offered him a little smile. “Let’s go,” he said.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real life is keeping me rather busy at the moment, but I will do my best to keep updating in a timely fashion. To make up for the wait, have a long (er) chapter with plenty of sex. Thanks so much for your patience and enjoy!

The Grand Imperium was eerily silent. Megatron followed Shockwave through the main entrance, sharply aware of the thousands of optics on him.

The domed structure of the central holoprojector had been boarded over, its central lens cover irised shut and a platform built atop it. Shockwave stepped aside and gestured him forward.

His footsteps sounded unnaturally loud as he clambered up the projector and approached the platform. The Prime was bound to it, limbs spread. Cool blue optics fixed on Megatron.

He was beautiful, Megatron was startled to see, but not unusually so. Optimus’s plating gleamed in the light of the Grand Imperium, slick contrasts of brilliant red and deep blue. Masked, the blocky shapes of his frame suggested a vehicle alt and Megatron could see the solid strength of his limbs, which vibrated with tension for all he did not tug on his bonds.

Time to see if this would work.

_“Can you hear me?”_ he sent, not permitting his expression to change in the slightest.

Optimus stiffened imperceptibly and his optics flickered. _“What are you doing?”_ His voice across the comms was deep and even.

Megatron approached and seated himself on the platform, but kept his hands to himself for the moment, his posture neutral and non-threatening. _“Senator Shockwave was kind enough to provide. You are fortunate to have such a friend.”_

_“We should not be speaking.”_

_“I will remain silent if you wish. But it sits ill with me to share myself with someone without first asking their opinion on the matter.”_

_“I…”_ Optimus’s field pulsed with conflict. _“My opinion does not matter here, surely you know that.”_

_“To the contrary, it matters very much to me.”_ Megatron leaned over Optimus, allowing their fields to mesh and the Prime shivered. _“I know my role in this, but the choice is yours. I will do this clinically, quickly if that is what you wish, and allow you to get back to your life.”_

_“Or?”_

_“Or you can submit to me fully and trust that I will bring us both through this unharmed.”_

Optimus’s optics narrowed. _“Who are you?”_

_“Megatron of Tarn.”_

Optimus trembled, his hands flexing restlessly in his bonds. And then slowly, slowly, he relaxed, sagging down atop the platform, his field opening up to envelop them both.

_“Thank you.”_ Megatron hummed out a non-verbal glyph of approval and ran a hand down one leg, Beneath the glossy slide of fresh wax he could feel the catch of scars upon his palm. His fingers weren’t thin or clever enough to reach between the seams of Optimus’s armor, but he paused at the knee joint and began to work his fingers into the gap, rubbing at the tensile cables.

Optimus shifted, his field roiling with uncertainty, but Megatron persisted and was rewarded with the click and whir of a cooling fan. He crawled atop the platform and straddled the Prime, but did not permit their bodies to touch yet, fuzzing his field against Optimus’s, sinking in ephemeral prongs to stimulate sensors his hands could not reach.

Optimus arched and arousal flashed briefly through his field. Bracing himself on one arm, Megatron leaned forward and cupped his face, thumb rubbing across his battlemask. _“Open this.”_

Optimus gave a core-deep shudder and his optics flicked in the direction of their audience. _“I…”_

Megatron tightened his grip on Optimus’s face until his optics focused back on Megatron’s. _“Forget them. They are not important. Open.”_ He upped the pressure of his field, gentle but implacable.

The mask slid back beneath his fingers. Optimus’s mouth was parted and he was panting faintly, an indication of his climbing core temperature. Megatron slid his thumb into the space, exerting testing pressure against his glossa.

A slight push back and then Optimus opened further, permitting Megatron to explore his mouth. He slipped in two fingers and stroked against his glossa before probing further, giving a slow thrust to signal his intention.

Optimus gave a nearly sub-vocal whine and his field spiked arousal. Withdrawing, Megatron sat up and scooted upwards, fitting his knees beneath Optimus’s shoulder joints. His interface hatch slid back and his spike pressurized. 

Optimus’s optics spiraled open and his ventilation hitched. Obediently, he lifted his head, allowing Megatron’s hands to support his helm as he slid inside. His intake tightened briefly and Megatron paused, holding until Optimus relaxed once more and he pushed him down, his nasal ridge pressing into the exterior of Megatron’s array.

He waited, stroking Optimus’s helm, allowing long moments to pass, allowing Optimus’s sensors to saturate with the taste and scent and feel of him, block out the building excitement of the fields around them, until he felt it, that tiny, imperceptible giving in Optimus’s field and he withdrew, and began to move.

He kept the pace slow, rhythmic, long strokes which rubbed against internal sensors never intended to touch anything other than energon. He kept his optics fixed on Optimus’s.

The coil of his overload tightened. He rubbed his thumbs against Optimus’s antennae, provoking a low moan around his spike, before he adjusted his grip, pushed in deep and overloaded. 

Optimus gave an involuntary jerk beneath him and his intake spasmed. Megatron hung on. _“Hush, take it. It’s alright. That’s it.”_ Optimus’s limbs strained against his bonds, his optics staring blindly as his intake gave a series of slow, hesitant contractions, swallowing Megatron’s transfluid.

He withdrew and swiped his thumb along the edge of Optimus’s mouth, gathering up a stray drop and offering it to Optimus, who moaned as he sucked it away. His field boiled with arousal. _“I need,”_ the comm stuttered off in static. _“Need you in me.”_

_“I know.”_

Optimus groaned. _“No, you don’t understand. I can’t overload without you in me.”_ His field blazed frustration.

_“Do you not trust your control?”_

_“I can’t…”_

_“You can.”_ He pressed down with his field and Optimus bucked. _“I am going to prepare you, and you are not to overload until I permit it.”_ Cradling Optimus’s helm, he tilted it until their optics met once more. _“Understood?”_

Shaking, Optimus allowed his body to go limp. _“Understood.”_

Shifting back, he urged Optimus’s legs up as far as the limited range of the bonds would permit. Kneeling between them, he laid his palm across his interface hatch, feeling the heat and pulse of charge beneath it. _“Open for me.”_

The hatch slid back and Megatron moved quickly, pushing back the spike before it could pressurize. Optimus made a small sound, but did not protest the manipulation. Beneath the spike housing, his valve clenched and dilated, lubricant leaking from the opening. Megatron vented a deep wash of warm air against the exterior before probing inside.

Calipers hitched down around his fingers, unusually tight, and Megatron had an uneasy thought. _“Have you done this before?”_

Optimus squirmed beneath him, fans roaring. _“Been, been a long time,”_ he managed.

Megatron spread his fingers and gave a gentle twist, feeling the lining expand. He sought out the raised bump of a node cluster and raked his fingers over it. Lubricant gushed and Optimus’s pelvic span jerked upwards. Pulling his fingers out, Megatron rubbed them together, feeling the slickness of the lubricant. Moving back, he extended his spike and pressed the ventral surface against Optimus’s valve, shifting his hips back and forth, sliding through lubricant and sparking over sensors.

Optimus’s panting increased in frequency. _“They said…”_ His optics offlined and his field pulsed with confusion and not a little shame. _“They said it would hurt. Was supposed to hurt, supposed to remind me that I am nothing, that Primes come and go and that my only purpose is to serve them, to maintain this parody of society that they have wrought.”_

_“Look at me.”_

Their optics met and Megatron thrust inside.

Optimus snapped rigid and a cry burst from him. His heels scrabbled against the platform, his field spiking with a mix of pain and pleasure.

_“Did that hurt you?”_

Vents heaving, Optimus focused back on him, _“Not as badly as the Matrix did.”_

Megatron smiled, lowering himself down until his weight rested on Optimus, _“Shockwave was right.”_

_“About what?”_

_“Sometimes it seems like Primus does know what he’s doing.”_

Optimus’s field pulsed with surprise. Hitching back his pelvic span, Megatron began to thrust, short, sharp movements that stabbed against the ceiling nodes of the valve. Optimus moaned and tightened around him.

_“I need—”_

_“I know, stay with me.”_ Adjusting his grip, Megatron began to thrust downwards, angling to rub the exterior of his array against the recessed tip of Optimus’s spike. Triumph blazed through him as Optimus shook beneath him, sobbing out a wordless plea. Megatron was barely aware of his spark pulsing in rhythm with Optimus’s and the need to merge, usually a background hum in interface, roaring up to inferno levels before his chassis locks clicked open.

He froze mid-thrust. Optimus’s optics spiraled open, field spiking with alarm even as his chassis unlocked itself. _“What’s wrong?”_ Megatron said, not sure whom he was asking.

_“I don’t know.”_ Optimus’s voice shook over the comms. _“I—I want to merge, need to merge. We_ can’t _merge.”_ His field flashed panic. _“We mustn’t.”_

Processor racing, Megatron dropped heavily atop Optimus, using their combined weight to keep their chests closed, and ground in deep. _“Overload for me, now.”_

Optimus’s plating sparked and his optics blazed white as he cried out. Metal groaned as he fought his chains and even through their armor Megatron could feel Optimus’s spark reaching for him, expanding as though it would engulf his own and he felt his body convulse, spilling into Optimus as current roared through him. Something inside Optimus’s valve shifted, opening further and Megatron felt himself overload again and again, endless aftershocks as their sparks strained towards each other and just when he feared he couldn’t hold back any longer, it ended.

He collapsed over Optimus, processor spinning. Optimus was deathly still beneath him, his field roiling with a strange mix of emotions. Megatron’s hands tightened against Optimus’s plating. _“Are you alright?”_

Optimus tensed slightly. _“Yes.”_ His voice was clipped.

Megatron wanted to stay, to check Optimus over, or demand answers for that strange overload, but the instructions had been very clear. He glanced uneasily around them. 

The Grand Imperium was far less silent, buzzing with the roar of thousands of cooling fans. It seemed they’d given their show. Megatron pulled out and stood, tucking his equipment away. Stuffing down the illogical urge to shield Optimus from the weight of gazes all around them, he stepped aside, exposing his valve, overflowing with Megatron’s transfluid. Optimus shifted slightly, his valve clenching and provoking a fresh flood, but did not look at him.

Shockwave materialized at Megatron’s side, tugging at his wrist. Numb, he let the Senator usher him from the room as domestic service bots began to appear to release Optimus from his bonds.

He didn’t let himself look back.

 

The lights in his housing unit were out.

Megatron sat for a long time in the darkness, head in his hands, trying to calm the raging pulse of his spark. 

This was madness. Optimus was a stranger. Optimus was the _Prime_.

He hadn’t even managed to pass him the datapad. Like some lovestruck idiot, he’d forgotten. His fingers tightened on his helm.

Maybe Impactor was right. Maybe his spark was glitched. 

A buzz at his door: Impactor of course, with a cube of high grade. The bot tossed and caught the cube before holding it out to him, a slag-eating grin on his face. “A show like that, figured you deserve a drink.”

Megatron stared at the cube as though he’d never seen one. Impactor pushed it towards him, impatient. “Come on, overloads always make me want one.”

He moved back and Impactor brushed past him and flopped into one of the seats. “Gotta admit, you outdid yourself. Never thought you’d be much for creative ‘facing but watching the Prime choke on your spike?” Impactor toasted him with the cube, “Highlight of my cycle.”

“Get out,” said Megatron.

Impactor raised an optical ridge. “What did you say?”

Megatron moved to the door and activated it. “Get out,” he said, indicating the hall.

Impactor snorted. “Funny. Now how about you sit down and have a drink and you can tell me how tight the Prime’s valve is.”

“Get out!” bellowed Megatron. His spark blazed with rage strong enough to choke him. “Get out before I throw you out!”

Impactor’s optics widened before narrowing. “You fried your motherboard? What the slag is wrong with you?”

“Out!”

Impactor scowled. “Fine, whatever, not like I get spare cubes every cycle.” He rose and made a gesture of disgust. “Let me know when you get the glitchmouse out of your exhaust pipe.”

Megaton slammed the door shut behind him, leaned against it, and muffled a miserable groan into his hands.

He was thoroughly fragged.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the plot begins to thicken.

“Doesn’t the Prime have a squadron of personal physicians?” said Ratchet. “What did you call me for?”

“I trust you,” said Optimus. “And this is both the simplest and the least suspicious way to contact you. Easier to let my handlers believe this is the eccentricity of a new Prime than try to convince them that we are friends.” He paused. “And this is not strictly a personal visit.”

“Oh?” Ratchet frowned. “What seems to be the problem?”

Optimus vented deeply. The symptoms had been alarming enough to bring him here, but now, sitting under the bright lights of Ratchet’s office, they suddenly seemed silly. “I am…tired.”

Ratchet raised an optical ridge at him. “You’ve just been put in charge of an entire planet. I’d be worried if you weren’t.”

“Excessively tired, and yet somehow restless. I find myself aching in places I am not used to aching. My fuel consumption has increased eighteen percent since—” _red-orange optics, pleasure-pain of a spike in him, spark crying out for its opposite_ “since approximately three orns ago.”

Ratchet gave him an all-too-knowing look. “You’re concerned it might be venereal?” He shook his head in disgust. “I would have thought those fools in the Senate would have had the sense to scan him beforehand.”

“Not…precisely.” A deep, uneasy thrill went through him at the thought of speaking his suspicions aloud. “I think that he…that the citizen they chose, I think he and I are spark resonant.”

Ratchet’s mouth flattened. “I’ve never bought into that much. Evidence is too flimsy.”

“I know, and I know that it ultimately means little, but Ratchet…” His spark gave an unpleasant turn. “Ratchet, I lost control. I’ve never lost control like that. If I hadn’t been bound…if he hadn’t stopped us, I would have merged with him right there in the Grand Imperium.”

Ratchet’s optics widened and he let out a low whistle. “Slag, what a mess.” He fell silent for a few moments, optics flickering in a way Optimus recognized, processing, diagnosing. “Has it occurred to you that this might be psychosomatic?”

“Perhaps,” Optimus said. “But the fuel consumption is real enough, and I presumed that you might have some advice if there is no physical ailment.”

“I can certainly get you a referral to a therapist. A good one, not one of those freaks that owe their allegiance to the Senate.” Ratchet indicated the medical berth. “Hop up. We’ll get you scanned and start from there.”

Optimus climbed atop it and settled back as Ratchet activated the berth scanners. This type of scan was slower than the ones Ratchet performed with his integrated scanners, but more thorough. He let his processor drift as the berth hummed beneath him.

Ratchet let out a small sound.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure. It looks like you’ve got some sort of foreign mass attached to your protoform.” Ratchet tapped the plating over lower left region of his chassis and frowned. “Do you recall picking up any shrapnel?”

“Not since before I was transferred to Rodion, and it’s all been removed.” Optimus shifted. “What would cause something like this?”

“Most common cause is a glitch in your repair nanite code. Confuse ‘em and they start building extra parts where you don’t want them.” The scanner cycled off. “Prognosis is good though, a simple check-and-recode. And removal of the extra mass of course.” Ratchet frowned and squinted at the report. “A bit more concerning is the fact that they seem to be going after bits of your internal armor and redundant systems. If they’re taking pieces of your frame and using them to build elsewhere, that’s a serious glitch. Usually only happens when there’s been catastrophic injury and they’re trying to keep you online.”

“What do you recommend?”

“Let’s pop your plating and have a look. I’ll put you under for the removal but I might need to redistribute this after the recode. That or put you on supplements to rebuild your armor.”

Obediently, Optimus disengaged the exterior and interior locks on his chassis, lifting up his plating to expose the cavity beneath. The Matrix blazed, a ring of light around his sparkchamber, but Ratchet ignored it, probing further into his internals.

“Here it is. May not even need to put you under for this, could just use a local—”

Pain shot through him and Optimus convulsed on the berth, tearing away from Ratchet, legs jerking as he curled into an instinctive, protective ball. 

“Slag, Orion, watch it! You almost took my hand off!”

“I’m sorry.” He struggled to gain control over his spinning processor. Primus, he’d been shot, burned with acid, struggled through a case of REDV-1 in the days before the vaccine, but he’d never felt a pain like that. “It hurt.”

Ratchet’s expression shifted from annoyed to concerned. “Let me have a look,” he said gently.

“I—”

“I won’t touch it, but I need to scan it.”

Shaking, he slid his hand back. Ratchet’s scanners engaged with a hum. There was a long silence, and then he cursed, soft and vicious.

“What is it?”

“I thought the scanners were glitching. They’re not. There’s a secondary spark signature here.”

“What does that mean?”

Ratchet’s mouth tightened. “It means,” he said slowly. “I think we need a xenobiologist.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay, real life has resulted in this story being set aside for a while, but hopefully I will get to work on it some more soon. Thanks as always for reading and commenting. Enjoy. :)

“You do realize that my area of expertise is biomechanics, not anatomy?” said Perceptor. “My colleagues are the ones who spend their days taking organic specimens apart.”

“You’re at least familiar with the idiosyncrasies of organic life,” said Ratchet sourly. “The closest I ever got was decontamination training.” He jerked his thumb at the report displayed on the berth console. “What do you make of this?”

Perceptor hummed and leaned closer to examine the report. “I’d tentatively hypothesize that it appears to be a small spark, encased in a mass of protoform and metal.”

Ratchet gave him a withering look. “Brilliant, now you’ve told me as much as the sparkless machine that produced that report. _Why_ is it there?”

“That I couldn’t say without further study. Though…” Perceptor adjusted his optics and indicated a region of the image. “It seems there is a sense of organization to the mass. Parts of it appear to be differentiating.”

“Differentiating?”

“Among most organic species, the creation of new individuals is governed by replication of baseline life units which then, er, change their coding to perform the necessary functions of life.”

Ratchet’s optics spiraled open in alarm. “Are you telling me there’s another _bot_ growing in there?”

“I would never presume,” Perceptor demurred. “But based on this initial examination, it appears that may be the case.” He turned to Optimus and made a slight bow. “Based on what I know from my colleagues who have spent time in organic societies, I believe the correct response is ‘Congratulations’.”

“Congratulations?” said Rachet. “This is a disaster.”

“I—” began Optimus

“Why?” said Perceptor. “True it is an anomaly, but it presents an exciting new opportunity for study.”

“Opportunity for—Perceptor, we’re not organics! We’re _built_ , not born! We don’t have the necessary hardware to produce offspring.” Ratchet thrust a finger in Optimus’s direction. “This is putting immense strain on his systems. Slag, it’s cannibalizing his systems. This could kill him!”

“Oh dear,” said Perceptor. “That is unfortunate. How much armor would you say he’s lost?”

“Nearly six microns!”

“That little? Based on the size of the embryo and factoring in conservation of mass I would presume far more than that. Where did the additional matter come from?” He looked at Optimus. “When did you say you started experiencing symptoms?”

“Three orns ago,” said Ratchet impatiently, before Optimus could reply. “And don’t call it an embryo!”

“Well it’s certainly more than a tumor,” said Perceptor. “Though I find myself curious about the source of the extra mass. Have you made a detailed examination? Taken samples?”

“You can take your samples after I get it out of him.”

Optimus cleared his vocalizer. “Perhaps we can gather a bit more information before we do anything drastic?” he said, his tone steely.

Ratchet glanced at him, startled. “Surely you’re not serious.”

“Whatever this is, I would prefer to have _all_ pertinent information about it.” He nodded to Perceptor. “What sort of samples would you take?”

Perceptor’s optics brightened. “Only a surface scraping, oh, and another deep scan,” he cast an apologetic look at Ratchet. “Not meaning any offense to you of course, I’d just prefer to do some more up-close imaging and perhaps get a copy of the sparkcode of the, er, mass.”

“By all means,” said Ratchet tightly. “Not as if I’m a _professional_ or anything.”

“Peace,” said Optimus. Opening the plates of his chest further, he beckoned Perceptor. “Take your samples.”

Muttering with excitement, Perceptor stepped forward, the tips of his fingers transforming into a myriad of small tools, and began to poke through his internals. Optimus did his best not to flinch as the tiny scrapers sent little electric jolts of pain through his sensor net.

The hum of a scanner and at last Perceptor withdrew. Optimus bit back a sound of relief and closed his chassis. Perceptor was already feeding his samples into Ratchet’s machine for analysis, his fingers flying over the touch interface. Ratchet only spared him a brief, irritated look before sidling over to Optimus. 

“We should make him sign a medical nondisclosure agreement before he leaves,” he said quietly. His field pulsed with unease. “Whatever this is, letting word of it get to the Senate before we know more might be…risky.”

Optimus’s optics flicked to Perceptor, who stood with helm down as he mumbled to himself. “Very well. Will it be sufficient?”

“If it isn’t, I fully intend to reformat him into an energon dispenser,” said Ratchet, his expression darkening. “And I _will_ append that clause onto the agreement.”

“Ah!” said Perceptor. “How interesting. The spark signature is unique, but there’s a second nanite code imprint here and when I entered it into the databases...” His fingers tapped out a new pattern. “I got a hit.”

A citizen record flashed up on the screen, displaying a serial number and a handful of pertinent stats, as well as an image, small and ill-lit, that had been broadcast for nearly a decacycle on every major holofeed network on Cybertron.

Optimus’s fists clenched.

“Oh,” said Perceptor, his field flickering with embarrassment. “I suppose that might explain the source of the additional matter.”

 

“It really is quite fascinating,” said Perceptor, manipulating the three dimensional hologram. “Rather than being integrated and the nanites recoded to match your own, as is typical in interface, the materials from your partner’s transfluid were transported to your chassis cavity to begin assembly. Your nanites only began to consume your systems and armor once the, er, donated resources had been exhausted.” His optic ridges drew together. “Though the question remains of how they even obtained coding instructions to do such a thing.” He looked at Ratchet. “Would you be able to perform a map-and-analysis against his prior medical records?”

“Basic sure, but coding was never my specialty,” said Ratchet. “I think it’s a _mite_ more pressing to stop the degradation though.”

“Of course, of course, my mistake, but that should be simple enough.”

“Oh? And what do you propose?”

Perceptor gave an awkward, little glance in Optimus’s direction, “At the risk of sounding indelicate, obtaining more donations.”

Ratchet looked alarmed. “I’m not certain that’s a good idea. Couldn’t we just bulk him up with supplements?”

“We _could_ in theory, but my main concern with that scenario would be the absence of new nanites to colonize the developing protoform. Interface is certainly both the simplest and most convenient method for material introduction.” Perceptor tapped his mouth, thoughtful. “And while I can’t state definitively, transfluid composition is nearly uniform among mechs. Barring a negative immune response, another donor could serve.”

Ratchet looked at Optimus. “Would that be acceptable? If you insist on continuing with this madness, would you be amenable to accepting donations from other sources? I’m sure that he,” he jerked his thumb at Perceptor, who made a spluttering noise as though his engine was backing up, “would agree in the name of scientific discovery, and there may be others who could be trusted to be discreet. From what you’ve mentioned of him, Senator Shockwave might be a good candidate.” His expression took on an edge of conflicted discomfort. “Or I would be willing.”

Optimus did not reply at first, turning over the pieces of information in his processor. His spark gave a disconcerted pulse at the thought that he might be harboring a lifeform inside him. He could keep this professional, a mere experiment to see what emerged…

_A slow smile, comforting weight and mass over him, in him, whispered words of pleasure and praise, spark pulsing in rhythm with his own_

“No,” he said finally. “While I appreciate the offers, I will deal with this matter myself.”

Ratchet seemed to track the direction of his thoughts. “Optimus…”

“My decision is final,” he said, his voice hard. “I will return to you for regular monitoring, but my choice in interface partners is a personal matter.”

“Fine,” snapped Ratchet. “Though at the risk of pointing out the obvious: you’re the Prime. If you start an affair with some two-credit ore-pusher, there will be talk.”

Optimus sighed. “I promise you, Ratchet,” he said “I will be the epitome of discretion.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear god, I am sorry for the long delay. Real life has done a number on me and then I ended up with a nasty infection and got to spend a large chunk of time laid up trying to cough out my lungs. Ugh. -_-;;; As an apology, have some more porn and Megatron with writer's block. Enjoy as always and thanks for reading and commenting. <33

The lights in his housing unit were out again.

Megatron stared up at the ceiling above his berth, counting the clicks of his chronometer and the swish of his fuel pump. Reaching into his subspace, he withdrew his datapad and stylus and pulled up the text of his treatise. Edited a sentence, read it, reverted it. Wrote a new sentence, erased it.

The cursor blinked.

Cursing under his breath, he let the pad drop onto his chassis. Outside the crackle of a building electrical storm buzzed against the walls of the building. 

He opened up a new text file and began to write a poem.

The words, once so easy, now slid and snarled in his grasp, images and ideas drained of color and meaning. He wrote a stanza, looked at it, and erased it.

The cursor blinked.

He tried to recapture the feel of those early poems, the dank dark of the tunnels, the spark-pounding sound of a Dweller’s scales scraping on metal, looking up to see the moon above him, close enough to touch, how it felt to stand for one glorious moment on the edge of an igniting hot spot and watch the electric-blue sparks spring to life—

_—brilliant blue optics on him, only him, a moment of submission and perfect trust, synchronicity between body and spark as he’d never felt, and he didn’t even need to wonder how it would feel to sink inside, the surety that their sparks would fit together as beautifully as that tightly clenching valve around his spike—_

He threw the datapad across the room. It hit the far wall and slid down, the screen blinking out. Lightning cracked and there was a muffled, rushing sound as acid rain began to fall.

 _“Is this a bad time?”_

Megatron went rigid, jerking upright, his optics flying to the window. Two pinpoints of blue light stared at him out of the darkness. _“What?”_

_“I apologize for dropping by unannounced, but I had to take what time was available to me.”_

Megatron stared. _“This hab-suite is six floors up.”_

 _“Yes,”_ Optimus gave a little, uncomfortable shift, _“and this part of the building is windward for the rain, so if you don’t mind…”_

He was at the window before he could think, fumbling with the locking codes. It slid open and Optimus maneuvered himself through. Rivulets of acid streamed down his plating, already beginning to etch the paint. “I’ll get a neutralizing wash and a mesh.”

“Thank you,” said Optimus, and a peculiar little thrill went through Megatron’s spark to hear him speak aloud.

Washracks in Megatron’s building were communal, so he always kept a supply of solvent on hand, for those cycles when he was too tired to wait for his turn and for emergencies such as getting caught in the rain. Optimus stood quietly as he sprayed him down, extending his limbs to make application easier, and did not protest when Megatron took the mesh and began to wipe him off, liquid dripping onto the floor and leaving behind lines of tiny droplets on red and blue plating.

Without thinking, Megatron bent, kneeling to reach his shin guards. A quiet cycle of his vents and Optimus shifted his legs apart, exposing the silver-white of his thighs to Megatron’s touch.

Megatron froze, gaze jerking up to meet Optimus’s. Blue optics burned into his from above the severe line of a battlemask.

A hitch in ventilation, whose he wasn’t sure, and metal screeched as they clashed. Optimus mouthed and bit at his neck cables as they staggered backwards. They bumped into the window, stumbling sideways and nearly falling before Optimus caught and steadied them and Megatron’s fingers bit into the plating of his leg, shoving him against the wall and hiking him up and open and— _smelt and slag_.

Optimus clawed at his shoulders and back, scraping the metal as he set a brutal pace. His valve was a vice, tight and slick and deep enough to take Megatron fully and he cried out in pain and pleasure as Megatron bumped against his ceiling nodes.

“Tight,” ground out Megatron.

Optimus’s optics flashed in challenge. “How many mechs do you think I let into my valve?”

Something dark and gleeful roiled in Megatron’s spark. “Let me see you overload.”

Optimus writhed, valve clenching down and his field flickering as his capacitors fought the charge. “I—”

Megatron’s fingers bit into the wall, “Now.”

A choked cry and the pressure around his spike went from snug to agonizing. Megatron pressed in tight, as though he could climb inside Optimus’s plating and wrap himself around that spark which beat with a rhythm he’d known since the moment of his forging, and overloaded, an endless rush, hot and liquid, and Optimus moaned, his valve opening further with the force of fluid expansion. 

Panting, Megatron leaned against him, the exhaust of their cooling fans hot between them. Metal clanked as Optimus allowed his helm to sag forward and rest against Megatron’s, his field abuzz with mixed emotions, wonder chief among them, but there was an undercurrent of affection as well.

Hesitant, Megatron raised his hand and ran his fingers along the curve of Optimus’s jaw, his spark giving an uncertain pulse as Optimus nuzzled into his touch. _Why are you here?_ he wanted to, did not dare to ask.

A pounding against the near wall cut him off before he could even formulate a question and he flattened himself against Optimus, an automatic response from his early days in the mines, shielding himself and his partner against the watchful optics of a supervisor and the sting of the lash.

“Keep it down!” came a muffled shriek through the metal.

Optimus’s optics widened and he looked a bit abashed. His expression tugged on something in Megatron’s spark and before he could help himself, his mouth twisted into a smile and a small snicker escaped him. Optimus’s expression shifted to one of mild affront, which only made Megatron laugh harder, his body shaking with the effort to muffle the sounds of his mirth until Optimus’s mouth twitched and he began to chuckle.

“You forget, my Prime,” said Megatron, when he could speak again, his optics twinkling with wicked humor, “the privacy here is not on par with the housing apartments in the Senate.”

Optimus turned and pressed his mouth against Megatron’s hand. “I shall keep that in mind,” he said, his voice deep with amusement.

Faced with a sudden acute consciousness that he’d grabbed and fragged his guest, _his Prime_ , before he could say more than three words, Megatron hastily pulled out and tucked his equipment away. Optimus gave a slight groan as he withdrew, valve tightening around the tip of his spike as though reluctant to let him go.

“Why _are_ you here?” said Megatron.

Optimus sighed and his field flickered weariness. “Many reasons,” he said at last, “but perhaps most importantly because I have missed you.”

“You don’t know me,” Megatron pointed out.

“True,” said Optimus. “But I have a difficult time believing I was the only one affected by our encounter in the Grand Imperium.”

Megatron flinched. “That…I owe you an apology.”

“Not necessary,” said Optimus gently. “You made the best of an untenable situation, and I do not regret anything that happened there.” He smiled and his field gave a little pulse of desire. “Except perhaps that you were pulled away so soon.”

Megatron stared at him. “Bluntback used to talk about meeting his…his resonant,” his spark turned within him, thrilled and mortified that he dared speak the impossible aloud. “A noble from Praxus, he claimed, met him while passing through the Upper Markets and said he felt a tug…the mech looked right at him, and turned away.”

“I am here,” said Optimus, stepping forward. “And if anyone has reason to turn away, it is you.”

“Never,” Megatron said, pulling him close, backing them up until his legs bumped into the berth.

 _Someday,_ he wanted to say. _I will claim your spark, claim all of you._ “Kneel,” he said instead.

He expected hesitation, suspicion, but Optimus only gave a little, quiet sigh and his legs bent. Megatron caught his hands, steadying him on the way down, and sat on the berth. He stroked his thumbs absently along the backs of Optimus’s knuckles, heavy and built for combat, “Why?”

“You asked me to trust you,” said Optimus. “You haven’t given me reason to believe you will betray it.”

The words caught in Megatron’s spark. He parted his legs, urged Optimus closer, stroking his dorsal plating and sides. Optimus bent, nuzzling against his interface hatch and his field pulsed with longing.

Megatron had never in his function met a mech that enjoyed sucking spike, which made the eager way Optimus took him in all the sweeter, glossa flicking beneath the head before prodding at the opening in the tip. Megatron cupped his helm and Optimus tilted his head back, opening up his intake to let Megatron slide in further. He touched the tip of his foot between Optimus’s legs, easing his knees apart and rubbing gently against the array that Optimus had never recovered. Lubricant smeared against his plating. “Touch yourself.”

Optimus moaned around him and his fingers sought his valve. His free hand clutched at Megatron’s leg and he arched.

Megatron helped him move, guiding Optimus along his spike as the movements of his fingers grew rougher and less coordinated. “Optics on me,” Megatron said. “Overload yourself, but keep them on me.”

A muffled noise around his spike and Optimus went rigid. His optics flickered, threatening to go offline, but he hung on, trembling.

 _“Finish in me,”_ he begged.

Megatron nodded. “Up.” He helped Optimus rise, but kept his own legs parted, forcing Optimus to straddle them, his legs braced wide against the floor and his valve spread open. His fingers dented the plating on Megatron’s shoulder guards as he sank down. “Stay,” he said, before Optimus could begin to move. His thumb sought the housing of Optimus’s spike and slid inside. “Do you know how to use this, I wonder?”

Optimus shook as he rubbed the tip. “Of course,” he managed.

“Oh? We may have to test that claim in the future.” He gave a gentle pinch to the tip and felt Optimus jolt, his valve clenching tight. “For now, ride me.”

Optimus obeyed, and there was something unspeakably satisfying in watching him exert his strength to keep his balance as he worked to bring Megatron to overload. He kept his hand on Optimus’s spike housing, rubbing his thumb across the tip in a slow, steady rhythm that matched Optimus’s pace.

His overload built, and at last Megatron jerked, his tensile cables drawing tight. Optimus let out a quiet whimper, valve rippling around him as though he could draw out more fluid, but his field still pulsed with unreleased charge.

Megatron coaxed him up, off and down on to the berth, arranging them chest to chest in the narrow space. His fingers brushed Optimus’s spike housing once more. “Let me.”

It pressurized into his hand, and he took some time to explore and admire it, large and well-formed if lacking much in the way of adornment, as Optimus shook against him. Finally he firmed his grip and began to pump. “Once more, for me.”

Optimus made a low sound and spilled into his fist, fingers digging into his plating in a spasmodic clutch. Megatron stroked him through the tremors before pulling away.

Their fans roared in the closeness of the hab-suite, and beneath them Megatron could hear the constant downpour outside. “You mentioned that my companionship was not the only reason you are here,” he said quietly, reluctant to break the spell between them. 

Optimus sighed. “It is…complicated. Some of it…I do not even know all of the particulars.” His expression grew serious. “You once asked me to trust you; can you offer me the same?” 

Megatron hesitated for a long moment, before raising his hand to his mouth to lick it clean of Optimus’s transfluid, an ancient gesture of trust, accepting nanites not his own into his body.

Optimus’s optics brightened. “Thank you,” he said, nestling closer as his systems dropped towards recharge. “I promise, I will explain in time.”

When Megatron’s chronometer woke him for his next shift, he was alone in the berth.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lateness, it burns. T^T I have no excuse for how long this has taken, readers, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. Shockwave has made it known that he will have a much larger role in this story than I originally intended him to have. Happy reading.

Ratchet frowned at the results of the full-body scan and gave Optimus a suspicious look.

“Well?” said Optimus.

“Your armor has mostly repaired itself,” said Ratchet. He scowled. “But the _mass_ is also twice what it was when I scanned you last. I see you’ve been busy.”

Optimus arranged his expression into something patently bland. “I assured you that I was capable of handling it.”

“Humph, I’m sure. Even without checking the mass, it’s hard to miss that well-fragged glow about you. Your miner must be quite something.”

Optimus took another sip of the energon Ratchet had pushed into his hands before he had even made it through the door. “I haven’t told him yet.”

“Good,” said Ratchet bluntly. “There are already more bots involved in this than I’d like. Let’s make sure you’re not going to pop out a half-sentient sparkeater or something before you break the joyous news.” His optics narrowed. “Speaking of which, _have_ you considered just how that thing is going to get out of there?”

“Perceptor indicated that emergence commonly occurs via the interface hardware.”

Ratchet stared at him, incredulous, before he clapped his hand over his face and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘slagging xenophiles’. Dragging it down, he leveled a scowl at Opimus. “That’s all very well and good for an organic lifeform, but that,” he jabbed a finger in the direction of Optimus’s interface hatch, “isn’t connected in any meaningful way to where the mass is located. Plus it’s already too large to fit, even if you were feeling particularly flexible. No, it’s coming out of here,” he indicated Optimus’s chassis, “or not at all.”

“I see,” Optimus gave a doubtful look at his own chassis. “Have you completed the code-mapping, to try and discover how this might have occurred in the first place?”

“Yes,” said Ratchet. “I’ve isolated all the code that doesn’t match with your previous records, but as I warned you, I’m a surgeon, not a coding specialist. Much as I hate to say it, we may need to bring someone in.”

“Do you know anyone trustworthy?”

Ratchet hummed. “Pharma got higher marks in code engineering than I did, but I’m not sure if he’s enough of an expert for our purposes.” He frowned. “Plus he’s been pretty distant lately. I’ll keep looking for now. We can always go to him if it becomes necessary.”

“Thank you, my friend.” Optimus checked his chronometer. “I believe I need to be going, if that is all?”

“For now,” said Ratchet. “Go, play your games with the Senate. But I want you rested, fueled and fragged, in that order. Good luck.”

“With the way Senator Proteus has been fighting me on the budget proposal,” said Optimus. “I will most likely need it.”

 

Optimus was half way up the steps to the Grand Imperium when a wave of vertigo struck him. Staggering, he wobbled and only managed to avoid tipping over by sitting down quite suddenly on the stairs.

Gyros wheeling, he hunched over, struggling to regain his equilibrium. Sensors flashed unfamiliar data at him as deep within his chassis he felt something _squirm_.

Half-sentient sparkeater, Ratchet had said. Shaking, he pressed a hand against the side of his chassis and gave a careful prod inwards with his energy field.

A shift, a wriggle, the feel of something turning and then, disconcertingly the sensation of an energy field pushing back at his, a feeling of curiosity that did not originate from him.

Trying to dissipate the initial sense of rushing panic, he pulsed back a feeling of calm and tranquility. The movement settled and he let out a deep sigh of relief.

“Optimus, are you alright?”

He started. He hadn’t seen or even felt Senator Shockwave approach, too absorbed in the strangeness going on inside him. “Senator, yes I’m fine, I only,” his processor gave a frantic churn, “I had a moment of exhaustion. Perhaps I’ve been working too hard.”

Shockwave gave him a long look before casting a careful glance around. “Optimus,” he said quietly. “In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never once admitted to working too hard, not even when you ran yourself to empty and passed out in a precinct meeting.” Optimus’s field pulsed embarrassment and Shockwave gave him a knowing look. “You didn’t think Springarm told me about that? Now, let’s get you somewhere with a bit more privacy, and maybe you can tell me what’s going on.”

 

Optimus couldn’t help a little sigh of relief as he sat, the contours of the seat taking the pressure off his joints. Shockwave pressed a cube of energon into his hand and seated himself across from him. He looked troubled.

“I understand that this,” he waved his hand as though to encompass the Matrix, Optimus’s Primacy, and all the resultant madness involved, “has put a great deal of strain on things between us, but I had hoped you still considered me a friend. I know you’ve been going to see Ratchet more than usual. Tell me truly, Optimus, are you ill?”

“I do consider you a friend,” said Optimus. “And I am not ill exactly. My condition is…under investigation. I did not wish to alert the Senate to anything before I knew more.”

Shockwave frowned. “This must be quite serious or unusual if Ratchet hasn’t been able to parse it out.”

“Ratchet is a brilliant physician, but his area of expertise is not code-mapping, so progress has been slow.”

“You have a coding issue?” said Shockwave, straightening. “Would you be willing to permit me a look?”

“You are a coding engineer?”

“ _The_ coding engineer, plus an expert in chemical and bioengineering. Top of my class at the Institute for Higher Programming.” Shockwave smiled wryly. “I decided to go into politics under the erroneous assumption that I could change the world.”

A small bubble of hope formed in his spark. “I would prefer to have Ratchet present when you do so, but I think something could be arranged. Would you be amenable to signing a medical non-disclosure agreement?”

Shockwave raised an optic ridge. “This ‘condition’ must be quite something,” he said. “Very well.”

 

Ratchet did not appear pleased with this development, but after looking over the agreement five times and scrutinizing the glyphs of Shockwave’s signature with the kind of attention he normally reserved for cosmic rust, he grudgingly displayed the report and code-map.

Shockwave’s optical ridges furrowed. “What exactly am I looking at here?”

“The beginnings of a new bot, if Perceptor is to be believed,” said Ratchet. “I’m still not convinced it’s anything more than an intelligent tumor.”

Shockwave’s optics widened. “Are you,” he cleared his vocalizer of static and looked between the two of them “are you telling me you’ve reproduced?”

“It isn’t _mine_ , if that’s what you’re asking,” said Ratchet. “But yes. It’ll be hard to know for sure until it emerges, if it emerges.”

“You don’t seem as surprised as I would expect,” said Optimus.

“Benefits of thirty-seven vorns of senatorial service,” said Shockwave. “I’m somewhere between glitching and full-on meltdown.” He sighed, “But I do have an inkling of where the foreign code may have originated.”

“Where?” said Ratchet.

Shockwave looked at Optimus. “How much do you know of the Matrix?”

“Very little. I was told it was a repository of the knowledge of all the Primes before me.”

“That is correct, after a fashion, but that is not all it is. In the oldest records we have, those from the Knights of Cybertron, it is called the Creation Matrix.”

Optimus cycled his vents.

“Very few know of its other name, and by extension its other function.” Shockwave looked back up at the report display. “Under the right circumstances, the Matrix can create life.”

“But how?” Ratchet burst out. “More than a dozen Primes have carried it, and this,” he waved a hand in Optimus’s direction “has never happened. And you can’t tell me it was because they were celibate.”

“The Matrix has never created life in such an…invasive fashion before, but it has been used for that purpose for a very long time. Or did it never occur to you to wonder what it meant for your colleagues who were ‘constructed cold’?”

Ratchet stiffened. “I don’t buy into that apartheid propaganda.”

“Most of it is propaganda, yes, but there is one of kernel of truth to be found. The official spark-splicing story told to the public was a lie. Every Cybertronian in existence on this planet who did not come from a hot spot had their spark ignited by the Matrix and received a copy of its unique sparkcode.” Shockwave’s mouth tightened. “If there is anything that could produce a code permitting a bot to create life inside his body, it is the Matrix.”

Shockwave moved across the room and sat heavily upon a spare medical berth, his expression troubled. “By the time of Nova’s reign the frequency of pulsewave events had dwindled to almost nothing. I don’t know how he did it, but Nova managed to use the Matrix to create life. Entire generations were constructed cold.”

“Entire generations of sparkcode clones?” said Ratchet. “That’s dangerous. One good plague could wipe them out.”

“Precisely,” said Shockwave. “But Nova wasn’t interested in a healthy population. He wanted soldiers, and he wanted a lot of them.”

“Is that what I am carrying?” said Optimus. “A cold-constructed bot, produced by the Matrix?”

Rather than reply, Shockwave rose and moved back to the console. The code map of the mass flashed and began to scroll.

“No,” he said, after several long cycles. “I’ve seen cold-constructed code before. The sparkcode isn’t a match.” The map of Optimus’s code sprang up beside it. “It’s a more than partial match to your own, but not a direct clone either.”

“Can you compare it against a third set?” said Ratchet.

“Of course.”

Nudging Shockwave out of the way, Ratchet punched in a new sequence. A copy of Megatron’s citizen record flashed onscreen and beneath it a copy of his coding.

At Optimus’s look, Ratchet shrugged. “Found out your miner came in for maintenance at the DMF. Siphon owes me a favor; I called it in.”

Optimus shook his head. “I was certain you took your medical code of ethics a bit more seriously.”

“Ethical coding is secondary when my patient’s life, my _friend’s_ life, is on the line,” said Ratchet. “Does it match?”

“Partially,” said Shockwave. He frowned. “It seems as if the sparkcode of…whatever this is did indeed originate from a reshuffling of both your coding.” He cycled his vents. “Somehow, you’ve created a unique individual, not a clonal spark.”

“But it can’t have just sprung into existence,” said Ratchet. “Sparks don’t do that. I could accept that it budded off, but it takes extreme conditions to accomplish that.”

“Such as an emotionally charged encounter with a spark resonant?” said Optimus quietly.

Shockwave’s optic ridges rose and Ratchet’s mouth went tight. “Not unless you merged with him,” he snapped. “And I’m sure _someone_ would have noticed if you had.”

Optimus’s fists clenched, but he did not answer.

“If there was enough built-up energy,” ventured Shockwave, his field soothing “it might have triggered a splitting event, even without a merge. You were under a great deal of stress, and it’s possible that a charge from the Matrix could have pushed you over the edge.”

“Ratchet mentioned that my coding had been modified,” said Optimus. “Can you discern the purpose of the modifications?”

“A conversion of your repair coding,” said Shockwave “in essence, changing the prime directive of a subset of nanites from ‘rebuild’ to ‘build’. It’s an elegant bit of work.” 

“Is it reliant on the presence of the Matrix?”

“It doesn’t appear to be.” Shockwave looked at Optimus with a hint of awe. “If everything goes smoothly, this will be the first new Cybertronian sparked since the end of Nova’s reign.”

“Excellent,” said Ratchet. “And when we have to explain the presence of this new individual, what then?”

Shockwave’s expression grew serious. “You do raise a good point. With the current climate in the Senate…I cannot say anything until I know more, but for now it would be wisest to say nothing. How many bots know of this?”

“Four in total,” said Ratchet.

“Five,” said Optimus firmly. At Ratchet’s look he said, “I can no longer continue my engagements with Megatron under false pretenses.”

“Optimus, do you honestly think that a low-level miner can be trusted to keep his vocalizer muted?”

“I do. Megatron had a hand in this creation event, has a hand in its development still, and it sits ill with me to keep this from him, now that we know that I am not carrying some sort of abomination.”

Ratchet gave an irritated mutter, but did not protest further. Shockwave nodded. “Make sure you impress upon him the importance of keeping this quiet. I need to make further contacts. I can obtain more information for you, but for now, keep an optic on Proteus.”

“I would be hard-pressed to ignore him, considering how loudly he is protesting the current budget proposal,” Optimus said. “I understand his frustration over his research funding, but the refineries in Kaon are more than overdue for upgrade. They can barely meet current demand as is.”

“Proteus doesn’t like the seething masses to have too much energon,” said Shockwave dryly. “Better to keep them hungry and tired and on the edge of disrepair so that they spend their offcycles sunk in pleasant stupor rather than thinking too hard about the current state of Cybertron.” He nodded to the two of them and extended a slender cable into the console. “I’ll take a copy of the code for further analysis and contact you when I can.”

Optimus gave him a grave nod in return. “Thank you, Senator.”

Shockwave’s mouth quirked, “Thank _you_. Despite the less than ideal circumstances, this is quite the exciting opportunity.”

“You and that blasted microscope both, I swear to Primus,” said Ratchet. “Just make sure you put that code somewhere it can’t be found.”

“I’ll put it where I put all my important code files,” said Shockwave. “In a data receptacle marked ‘Interface Supplemental Material’.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am still pecking away at this. Have some porn and a teensy bit of foreshadowing. Enjoy and thanks to all of you still reading for your patience. :-)
> 
> Chapter betaed by [grimcognito](http://archiveofourown.org/users/grimcognito). Thank you for all the encouragement.

If not for the pleasant ache of overloaded systems, the traces of fluid and the lingering scent of metal dust, Megatron would almost believe Optimus’s visitations to be a recurring dream. A maddening, inconsistent dream which arrived in no discernible pattern, in which he was ridden and sucked and satisfied beyond his wildest fantasies. In which his Prime spread open beneath him and begged and submitted in a self-assured, unabashed way Megatron had only ever seen in interface holo-vids, but without the artificial edge. During their last meeting, he’d half-asked, half-commanded Optimus’s chest plates open, fully expecting refusal, but he’d complied and Megatron had spent a full breem with his glossa against that brilliant spark, overloading Optimus again and again until he could only plead for Megatron’s spike in him. 

Some offcycles, Optimus did not come.

On those offcycles, Megatron wrote.

He’d feared the words might abandon him, but now they flowed out with ever greater force, poems, impassioned analyses, all never to be read by anyone who mattered.

It was the joor of the sparkeater and he woke to darkness, the soothing hum of Optimus’s systems beside him and the faint blue glow of an active datapad. Optimus sat propped against the wall beside him, face lit from below as he read.

Megatron had entered the Grand Imperium with the express purpose of bringing this to pass, but now, knowing his words were laid out bare beneath those blue optics, he felt a flood of uncertainty. “What are you reading?”

Optimus glanced up at him. “I finished ‘After the Ark’,” he said. “I was looking over some of your poems.”

“What do you think?” the words sounded casual, but Megatron found they took great effort to say.

“I am not a connoisseur of poetry,” said Optimus. “But these are quite pleasing and thought-provoking. Have you considered submitting them to one of the Iacon literary journals?”

Megatron gave him a long, careful look, trying to determine if he was serious. “I am not a state-sanctioned poet, as you well know, so it matters very little what I have considered.”

“I know,” said Optimus, his tone resigned. He shut off the datapad and handed it back to Megatron. “I’ve read the state-sanctioned poets; most of them don’t write anything a tenth as interesting.”

“That’s anti-functionist rhetoric,” said Megatron on automatic.

The edges of Optimus’s mouth turned up. “I know that too.”

“Keep that up and Prime or not they’ll haul you off to the Institute.” His spark churned within him at the thought, systems spiking in response to his alarm.

Optimus must have felt the change in his field. His optics focused back on Megatron and his expression softened. “I know well enough how much or little I can say without provoking them, at least for now.”

The subtle implication sent a thrill through Megatron. It was one thing to hear agreement from the mouths of fellow miners who’d had a few too many, but this was the _Prime_. The representative of the whole system that crushed them, and yet the Senate hadn’t been able to turn him into a walking advertisement for functionism.

Against all odds, the Matrix, mystical or not, sentient or not, had defied them. And now it seemed as if the Prime would defy them as well. He pushed aside the surge of irrational hope. “See that you take care.”

Optimus captured his hand and pressed his mouth against it, mapping out the scars on Megatron’s palm. “I will.” His field pulsed open affection and Megatron’s spark lurched. “There is something I would speak to you about.”

“What is it?” Megatron tamped down on the instinctive urge to simply roll Optimus over, hike up one of those gorgeous, solid legs and sink himself into the valve it seemed was always wet, always welcoming. Although a deep part of him somehow knew that the Prime would not protest, it was the principle of the thing.

Optimus hesitated. “Perhaps it might be easier to show you.” He guided Megatron’s hand to the side of his chassis. “Here.”

It was no great trial to run his palm across glossy red plating, but he detected nothing unusual. “What am I supposed to be—?” He broke off, optics widening in alarm as beneath his hand, something… _shifted_.

Not a physical shift, he realized as he forced his vents back to life, but an energy flux, small yet distinct, pushing back against his own field. An energy flux which read to his processor as _not-Optimus_.

Megatron snatched his hand back as though he’d found it immersed in acid. “What was that?”

“If a medic, a xenobiologist and a coding engineer are to be believed, it is the first new bot sparked into existence since the cessation of the pulsewave events.”

It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke, but the look on Optimus’s face was deadly serious. Questions crowded into Megatron’s processor, bubbling and boiling over until he could only choke out, _“How?”_

“The Matrix,” said Optimus, his expression pensive. “It produced a new program, which activated during our encounter in the Grand Imperium and triggered a new spark to bud off from my own.”

“You cloned?” Megatron grasped at the somewhat familiar term. It was vanishingly rare, but he’d met a miner who’d done so, producing a spark twin of sorts. It usually required surgery to remove the spark and transfer it to a new protoform.

Optimus shook his head. “No, the spark code is not a match for my own. It is a unique imprint, reshuffled from mine and yours.”

“Mine?”

“This new…spark, is as much yours as mine.”

“It’s, it’s _sentient_ then?” Megatron’s processor groped helplessly for language to handle this, language that didn’t yet exist. “Not a drone, a true individual?”

“I am not sure I am qualified to comment on the nature of sentience,” said Optimus, “but it, he perhaps, has a certain awareness, though I admit that I have only detected anything resembling such now that it has grown.” He turned his hand over, offering, but did not reach for Megatron. “Come and see.”

Fear warred with curiosity, but Megatron shoved the base emotion aside and surrendered his hand. Optimus pressed it against his chassis again. “Reach out, let him feel your presence.”

Megatron obeyed, probing inwards with his field, as he might have to soothe and convey affection to a friend or interface partner. For a moment he felt nothing and then, impossibly, something pushed _back_.

He could understand Optimus’s uncertainty; the whatever-it-was didn’t read like a fellow bot, discrete or even flowing emotional data. Instead it buffeted against him in a discordant jangle, contentment, happiness, playfulness, and overwhelming curiosity. The creature, the ‘new spark’, burned to know and was frustrated by the stymieing encasement surrounding it.

That emotion he could grok. Cautious, he fed back a sense of empathy and encouragement, a request for patience.

The resultant flurry of emotional activity rocked him backwards and Optimus winced as somewhere in his chassis something clanked and scraped alarmingly. “Did he hurt you?” said Megatron.

“Not exactly,” Optimus said with a small grimace. “I cannot say his, thankfully occasional, movements are particularly comfortable though.” 

Something nagged at him. “You mentioned he was growing.”

“Yes?”

“Where does he get the component materials?”

Optimus actually looked embarrassed. “For a time, he was cannibalizing off my frame, but for the last number of orns he has been utilizing nanites and trace minerals from your transfluid.”

Megatron’s mouth went flat. “I see. So that was why you sought me out.”

“No,” Optimus’s voice was adamant. “I could have utilized another bot for donations if it had become necessary, but I—no, that is not why I sought you out.”

Something dark and uneasy coiled in Megatron. He reached for Optimus, pulling him down and under him just to watch the way he went, frame relaxing and legs falling open. “Tell me.”

Optimus’s vents hitched. “You know why.”

He wrapped his hands around Optimus’s wrists, pinning them to the berth. “Tell me anyway.”

Under the dull roar of their cooling fans he heard the now-familiar sound of Optimus’s interface hatch sliding open. The Prime twisted under him, pelvic span angling upwards and his valve pressed against Megatron’s interface hatch, wet and eager, “I—”

Megatron withdrew his own cover, but kept his spike retracted, shifting down to rub the slick folds of his valve against Optimus’s own, raising prickles of charge, before moving up to push against the recessed tip of Optimus’s spike. “When was the last time someone rode you?”

Optimus groaned. “Ages ago. Work, the office, there hasn’t been anyone—there wasn’t time.”

“We shall have to rectify that.” His valve clenched, unusual excitement flooding him at the prospect of taking that heavy spike inside him, of riding Optimus to completion as he clutched at Megatron and begged. “But for now,” he nudged the tip of his spike, still retracted, against the opening of Optimus’s valve. The aperture flexed, grasping at him with futility. “I believe something must be done to prevent you seeking out ‘donations’ from elsewhere.”

“Please.”

“Tell me.”

Optimus hooked his legs around Megatron’s pelvic span, his hands still pinned to the berth. His helm fell back, his optics distant and desperate. “I wanted it to be yours.”

Slowly, he allowed his spike to pressurize, pushing past the first calipers. “Why?”

Optimus offlined his optics as his valve stretched around him, “Because I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“I want your spark again,” Megatron whispered, barely daring to breathe the words.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I want to know you.”

Optimus shuddered at the promise in his words, but his chestplates withdrew, baring the blazing light of his spark, too brilliant for the mediocrity of Megatron’s hab-suite. “I do not know what will happen.”

“I suppose we shall find out.”

Megatron had merged only once, soon after his forging, while he was still new and overflowing with eagerness to take on the world, still gaining an understanding of his body and how this strange, bright part of himself could bring pleasure as well as pain. His partner was a distant memory, a bland if pleasant enough recollection, all innocence and boredom.

This was something quite different. Optimus’s spark latched onto his, opening up as though it would engulf him. Visual and auditory input vanished, leaving Megatron with only a vague awareness of Optimus’s wrists beneath his hands, the clutch of his valve, before he was swept away into a maelstrom of sensation and memory. He was himself, not-himself, was Optimus, not-Optimus.

_Pain: the lash of an energon whip, the burn of blaster rounds as they chewed through plating, the twist and ache of struts strained past exhaustion, the agony of spark and frame as the Matrix sank its prongs into his spark._

_Pleasure: the fuzz of high grade, the feel of being inside another, another inside him, the comfort of warmth beside him._

_Fear: the automatic flinch from crook and flail, the clench of fingers around the grip of a blaster, the rapid pulse of spark as stylus pressed to datapad, as hundreds of cold and clever optics fixed on him._

_Lov—_

Megatron tore himself away with a gasp, spark whirling _cannot, cannot, cannot, too much, not enough, I cann—_ His physical body convulsed in overload and his processor cried out wordlessly in protest.

Optimus’s hand clamped around the back of his helm, solid, grounding. “Easy,” he said, his voice static and rough, but even, belying the still-sparking clench of his valve. Below the words Megatron could hear the clank and grind as their chests closed. “Keep your fans running, focus. You are still you, still intact.”

“What was that?”

“I have been reading up on spark resonance,” said Optimus. “Ratchet is correct, the studies are patchy, but the anecdotal evidence…there have been numerous indications that merging is far more intense.”

“That is putting it mildly.” Visual input was returning, fragmented and full of static. “I felt…” _Like I would lose myself._ “How did you hold together?”

Optimus smiled tightly. “When I merged with the Matrix, I didn’t.”

“Fair point.” Even the spark-echo of that all-consuming pain had been unnerving. “I suppose one miner from Tarn can hardly hope to hold up against a vessel of creation.”

Optimus looked amused. “I would not say that.” He squeezed about Megatron’s spike as it withdrew from his valve. “I find interfacing with you far more pleasant.”

Reminded, Megatron slid his hand down between them and touched the exterior of Optimus’s valve, contrite, “I apologize, it has been some time since I have experienced something so powerful.”

“I understand completely,” said Optimus. “Though if you _did_ wish to apologize,” he traced the edge of Megatron’s mouth with a finger. “I am certain I could think of something.”

Despite the system shock, Megatron’s engine revved. Shoving Optimus flat, he hiked up those lovely, solid legs and pushed them apart to expose his valve, still dripping with Megatron’s transfluid. Optimus laughed as he burrowed in, and he sucked hard on an exterior node in retaliation.

A gasp and those heavy hands gripped his helm, “Oh, there.”

He hummed out his acquiescence just to feel Optimus buck beneath him. Fingers tightened, sliding under the heavy edge of his mining helmet and he disengaged the mag-locks to ease the discomfort. Optimus went still at the sound.

“Megatron?”

“Hm?”

“Your helm.”

Pulling back slightly, he vented warm air across the valve and watched it contract. “What about it?”

“I thought it was fixed.”

Lifting his head, Megatron licked lubricant from the edges of his mouth. “You may know my spark, but that does not mean you know _all_ of me.”

“No doubt,” said Optimus, though there was something soft and wondering in his optics. “Show me?”

Megatron nudged against his hands and Optimus lifted the helm free, setting it aside on the berth near them. The absence of weight was strange and Megatron shook his head slightly, allowing his transmitting panels to unfurl and flex. Above ground, and so close to this many other bots, the buffeting hum of commlinks and EM fields made them ring like struck crystal.

Optimus’s ventilation hitched, “How beautiful.” His hands hovered near; the small fluctuations of his field a pleasurable itch against Megatron’s panels. “May I touch?”

Megatron regarded him doubtfully, “If you wish.” Pushing aside the instinctive embarrassment at such a hidden part of him being the object of scrutiny, he bent to his task once more.

Heavy fingers, shaped to hold a blaster or an energon axe, traced along the flat panels and open circuitry, raising small prickles of charge as minute connections were formed and broken. Optimus let out a curious sound, fingers curling around the panels and tugging Megatron just a little harder against him.

Megatron chuckled and jabbed his glossa deep, chasing the taste of his fluids and Optimus’s fingers clenched, sending waves of conflicting sensory information across Megatron’s neural net. He made a small, choked noise as wires were bent and tiny sensors crushed, his valve clenching down on nothing.

Optimus froze above him, grip slackening, field flashing uncertainty, but Megatron pushed upwards, optics offline as he probed further into Optimus’s valve. Gripping the Prime’s thighs, he ground his nasal ridge against the exterior nodes below the spike housing.

Optimus let out a startled sound as he overloaded, charge tingling across Megatron’s glossa as his valve drew tight. Collapsing back against the berth, fans roaring, he gasped out, “As pleasant as that was, I fear you may have removed all the material you worked so hard to donate.”

Megatron heaved himself up, optics bright, spike already pressurizing, “A problem easily remedied.”

 

_“Welcome. You have accessed the private message receptacle for Senator Shockwave. Due to circumstance, I am unable to connect with you in real time, but please feel free to leave a message. I will get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you.”_

_“…Shockwave, this is Medical Officer Ratchet, again. While I know this might be inconceivable to a politician, some of us do have more important things to be doing than tracking down errant coding engineers. I’ve got three surgeries scheduled this cycle and I need that coding analysis before Optimus’s chest rips open in the middle of a Senate meeting or something. If I don’t hear from you in another dozen megacycles, I’m going down to harass your secretary in person.”_


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life's keeping me very busy at the moment, but I'm working on this whenever I can and the story's continuing to take shape. No porn sadly, but have some political intrigue instead. Enjoy and thank you for reading. :3

“Based on the information provided by the petitioner from Kaon,” said Optimus, pitching his voice so it could be heard across the floor of the Grand Imperium. “The refineries are running at far under capacity due to overdue repairs and low wages on the part of both the workers and the miners who transport ore in from locations such as Outpost C-12. I put forth a recommendation for allocation of funds for immediate repairs and a fifteen percent increase in energon provided per worker in order to ease the energon shortages elsewhere.”

“Impossible,” spoke up Senator Decimus from across the room. “The refineries are inspected regularly and I have received no notification regarding a need for major repairs. And as for increased wages, the workers already receive sufficient energon to maintain basic function. If we give them more, who’s to say they won’t just gamble it away? Or worse, start up illegal distilleries in the barracks, which I might add we generously provide free of charge to shelter them?”

“Those baselines were set based upon studies performed on bots who worked in mid-level positions,” said Optimus, silently thanking Ratchet for the mound of medical literature he’d divulged when asked. “Miners and heavy class mechanisms typically require more, in particular if they are performing long shifts of intense labor. Succinctly put, your workers are starving, and so they underperform. Senator Shockwave can confirm—”

“Senator Shockwave is on sabbatical,” interrupted Sentator Proteus. “As we have informed the Prime repeatedly. And from where were you anticipating pulling these resources?”

“From the general fund,” said Optimus. “A five percent cut across the board should be sufficient to cover any necessary expenses.”

“Unacceptable,” said Senator Proteus. “The budget for this orbital cycle is already approved and in place. If you wish you may submit a new budget proposal for the following cycle for review.”

“Our citizens cannot wait that long,” said Optimus, struggling to keep his voice even. “It will take nearly an orbital cycle as it stands to repair the refineries and get the mines up to safety codes, plus the inevitable delay between repair and increased output. We have mechanisms starving in the streets as we speak.”

“Criminals and undesirables,” said Proteus smoothly. “If they participated in society according to their function, they would be cared for.”

Optimus suppressed a flinch as the creature in his chassis rolled over, sending waves of discomfort through his neural net. “I believe that—” the creature squirmed again, raking lines of fire in his protoform and he broke off, clutching the edge of the lectern.

“Prime?” Proteus’s optics were keen.

Optimus’s gyros wheeled and his fingers dug into the metal beneath them, “Pardon me, I need a moment.”

“Is the Prime unwell?” said Proteus, his expression utterly calm. “Perhaps—”

“I have something which may be of interest to the Senate,” rumbled a voice from a nearby seat. “Specifically to the question of whether the refinery repairs are necessary.”

“I’d kindly request you keep out of this, Senator Dai Atlas,” said Decimus tightly. “Unless you’ve forgotten who is in charge of overseeing energon production in your dotage.”

“I would be hard-pressed to do so, considering that you never stop mentioning it,” said Dai Atlas, his tone bland. “But sometimes it is helpful to have an outside perspective when one is working so closely upon a project. How do they put it: you may miss the circuit board for the connectors?”

“If you have a problem with how I do my job,” sniped Decimus. “You may file a formal complaint for a hearing.”

Dai Atlas shrugged, “As you will. But based upon my initial audit of the Toraxxis mega-refinery and statistical predictions run with those numbers, we could expect widespread energon shortages in as little as half an orbital cycle.”

The Senate erupted into chaos, frenetic shouting echoing off the walls as mechanisms leapt to their feet. 

“Half an orbital cycle? That’s no time at all!”

“How do we know the audit is accurate?”

“We can’t cut budgets half way through the cycle; we’ve allocated just a sufficient amount! We’ll run out of funds!”

“The Nebulans might be willing to help us!”

“At _their_ interest rates? We might as well rip out our spark chambers and—”

“Order!” bellowed Proteus, and the hubbub died back. “Senator Dai Atlas will kindly submit his research for review. Should his results indicate anything is amiss,” Proteus’s tone indicated he found this improbable, “a secondary audit shall be performed at the discretion of Senator Decimus and his committee.”

“If Senator Dai Atlas’s results _do_ indicate a problem,” spoke up Optimus, mastering himself and straightening, “a secondary audit will be nothing more than a time-wasting exercise. As I said before, my proposal is based upon a five percent cut across the board of all remaining funds allocated for this orbital cycle. Based upon budget records, this should leave all departments well within the range of previous funding parameters. Lower, yes, but still sufficient.” Lifting his head, he swept his gaze across the sea of faces, catching an optic here and there, “We will all need to cut back, but is it not worth a little discomfort to ease the suffering of one’s brothers?”

“Our brothers?” said Senator Halogen with incredulity. “Buymechs, syk-addicts and gladiators?”

“Sentient beings,” said Optimus firmly. He gestured towards the glyphs engraved high above him, stark and pale against the blue column that jutted behind the Primal lectern. “‘Freedom is the right of all sentient beings’ is that not what we are tasked to uphold?”

“And so they are free,” broke in Proteus. “Free to choose to wallow their lives away in high grade and circuit boosters. Free to murder each other for entertainment. Free to commit acts of terrorism against their fellow citizens. What would Nominus Prime think of this vaunted freedom?”

“Nominus Prime’s death was a tragedy,” said Optimus slowly, his processor racing. “But fear does not give us the right to strip away the rights of all, to crush any hint of dissension. We should take those hints not as a warning to tighten security, but as an opportunity to listen to the woes of our people.”

A cough broke the silence and Senator Momus rose from his seat, his expression uneasy but his head held high. “I can vouch for the Prime’s claim about the miner’s energy requirements,” he said. His optics darted and his arms, marked with the same striped pattern in black and yellow that Optimus had seen adorning Megatron’s forearm guards, crossed before him in a defensive posture. “Usual length shift, we were always running on at least a ten percent deficit.”

“Thank you for your unsolicited comment, Momus,” said Proteus poisonously and Momus sat so fast Optimus could hear the squeak of protesting components. “But we do not make budget decisions based on hearsay and emotional pleas. We will put Senator Dai Atlas’s audit up for review. Then, provided it proves necessary, a secondary audit will be made and a new budget proposal drafted and put up for a vote.”

“As our resident expert on energy production is on sabbatical,” said Dai Atlas. “I find myself compelled to ask: review by whom?”

“My committee is perfectly capable of crunching your numbers,” snapped Decimus, but Proteus raised a quelling hand.

“If you are so concerned with the accuracy of the review,” he said, casting a tiny, triumphant smile in Dai Atlas’s direction “then you shall simply have to wait until Senator Shockwave returns from his sabbatical to have it performed. Now,” he straightened, his expression growing serious, “perhaps we might adjourn for the time being? Some of us have real work to attend to.”

The words were directed at Optimus, but they were not a request. Optimus’s gaze flicked to the guards near the door, their red, winged badges, tiny mirrors of Proteus’s helm fins, gleaming in the light. “Very well,” he said at last, the words bitter in his mouth. “We shall adjourn.”

“Thank you, Prime,” said Proteus, his tone light and smooth. “The Prime’s dedication to his office is admirable, but one should not forget themselves and work too hard, particularly if they are, shall we say, unwell?”

“Thank you for your concern, Senator Proteus,” said Optimus tightly and raised his voice so the room could hear him clearly, “Dismissed.”

 

Dai Atlas caught him on the way up to his apartments above the Senate floor. “That was quite a display,” he said, falling into step behind Optimus, though the effect of his casual posture was somewhat lost by the fact that he filled half the corridor, his enormous wings casting long shadows on the ornate etchings that lined the walls. “You should be careful how far you push Proteus. You haven’t the powerful allies to back you up.”

“I am aware of that,” said Optimus, his pace unfaltering.

They walked in silence for several moments.

“I admit,” said Dai Atlas abruptly, “when the Matrix chose you, I had some reservations.”

Optimus paused before the door of his quarters, “Because of my caste?” He turned to look Dai Atlas over, “And there’s no need to play little games of politeness. Police and military are branched-spark brothers, and I am well aware of your disapproval.”

“And yet I think you do not understand it,” said Dai Atlas. “It is not your caste which gave me pause. Functionist regulation has always sat ill with me. Indeed it is something that Shockwave and I bonded over. No, it unsettled me that the Matrix would chose the spark of a non-believer, untried and untested. The tides are shifting and our people are growing restless. Now is not the moment for a newly-minted Prime.”

“I would be hard-pressed to remain a steadfast atheist in the face of this,” Optimus said quietly, touching the plating of his chassis. “It was a burden unasked for, but I will not turn away from those who need me, those whose voices are lost in the cacophony and whose bodies are crushed between the gears that make our planet turn.”

He broke off when he realized Dai Atlas was staring at him and gave a little shrug of embarrassment, “I realize how ill-equipped I am for political office, but I am learning. Shockwave has been a great help. He was the one who suggested reopening the polity petitions.”

“He is a true and loyal friend, if not the wisest of politicians,” agreed Dai Atlas. “I was initially reluctant to trust him; science is his dogma, logic his lodestone and I did not know what marks his former master had etched upon his psyche. But his rationality is tempered by compassion, and his confidence in you has gone far in soothing my fears regarding your worth. Further it is on his behalf that I approach you.”

“Anyone with half a processor can tell that the sabbatical narrative is a lie,” said Optimus, his optics hardening. “But Proteus is slippery and it’s difficult to turn up evidence of foul play when he has Sentinel and all his employees tucked neatly in his subspace. In theory I could command them to investigate, but I can guarantee they will find nothing. So why me?”

“Because, Orion Pax,” said Dai Atlas, the blasphemous utterances of his former designation rolling off his vocalizer as though he were acknowledging an acquaintance on the street, “this is a mission that requires not the Prime, but the investigator.”

Optimus raised an orbital ridge, “And what makes you think that I can go waltzing off into the underbelly of Iacon to do so? Surely someone will notice if their Prime shows up at their doorstop to make inquiries?”

Dai Atlas actually chuckled, a low rumbling cough of his flight engines that rattled the curved sconces on the walls, “I suspect you are better at passing unseen than you let on, my Prime, considering that you have employed such skills on numerous occasions in the last orn to visit your lover.”

Optimus went rigid, his field snapping with alarm, but Dai Atlas held up a quelling hand, “I am no danger to you, or him. I care little for who others choose to dally with. Though you should know that if those who report to me have noticed you, others will as well. Those who might not take so kindly to their Prime having a potentially scandalous affair with a low-caste bot.”

“I have heard nothing so far.”

“But you must consider then, that it may because they are holding such a piece of intelligence in reserve.”

“True,” said Optimus. “I will alert him.”

Dai Atlas’s expression grew pensive, “Take care, Optimus Prime. Watch your step and your back. I have not been able to uncover what has become of Shockwave, but my spark tells me it is nothing good.”

“I will do what I can,” said Optimus. “And thank you for the warning.”

Dai Atlas nodded in farewell and turned to leave. Optimus watched him go before entering his quarters and locking the door behind him. Leaning against it, he offlined his optics and began his now-ornly sweep for bugs.

Only three this time, in the berthroom, near the entrance, and one, to his consternation, in the washrack. Good, he could wait to “accidentally” destroy them until a later, less-suspicious time. He onlined his optics and moved towards a small side room that overlooked the city. The Towers of Iacon glowed stark and golden against the horizon, the jewel-bright streets seething below. Seating himself on the floor before the window, he activated his scrambler, a still useful police tool that the Matrix had not stripped from him, and pinged Ratchet.

_“Optimus?”_

_“Anything?”_

_“Still nothing. If Shockwave got admitted to a facility, it’s beyond my clearance. And his medical records are locked down tight.”_

_“What about anything that could gain us access to his personal quarters?”_

_“You’re the better burglar between us,”_ said Ratchet. _“Besides, if there’s anything, Proteus’ll have stripped it out by now.”_

Optimus leaned back and sighed, _“Personal contacts?”_

_“Shockwave’s too morally superior to use buymechs.”_

Optimus raised an orbital ridge, _“Something you feel like sharing, Ratchet?”_

 _“No,”_ came the steely reply. _“My point is, Shockwave does his best to stay out of the rumor mill. You want info on his lovers; you’ll have to go higher than slag journalism.”_

Optimus paused, shifting the conversation thread aside for a moment and sending out a query to one of the more public forums in the Senate. Yes, there was a gathering that would fit the bill, and in less than three megacycles, _“I think that might be arranged.”_

_“What, you going to get Contrail drunk and flirt with him until he spills his internals?”_

Optimus smiled, _“In fact, my friend, that is exactly what I am going to do.”_

 

The light was lowered to soothing levels and a calming rendition of Resonance’s _Waltz of the Sharkticons_ played over the murmur of voices, bouncing off the vaulted ceilings and ringing against the crystal adornments, abstract replicas of creatures dredged from the Rust Sea, which hung above their heads. Serving bots moved among the crowd, balancing trays of energon in an ultraviolet rainbow of colors. Optimus snagged another small cube of something layered toxic green and violent red, something memories of the vice circuit told him was devastatingly potent, and passed it to Contrail, “Rumor has it you’ll be returning to Vos for the next few orns.”

“Of course,” said Contrail, accepting the drink and knocking it back with the easy and audacious grace of an ex-military bot, “have to keep my compatriots on their toes. And Iacon’s nightlife is sadly, rather lacking.”

Optimus refrained from commenting on the frequency with which he’d broken up Syk-riddled orgies as an officer in Rodion, “Oh no doubt. Though we do our best.”

“Yes, well,” said Contrail, his expression smug. “You have not truly lived until you have attended a gathering in the aeries of Vos. They last for groons, you know. The high grade never stops flowing and the hosts never fail to provide…other diversions.”

“Oh?”

Contrail’s smile was edged in condescension, “Come now, they don’t _really_ expect you to live the life of an ascetic. Certainly not after the little display in the Grand Imperium.”

“Ah, you’re speaking of companionship. Alas, I have not had the time for such pleasant diversions of late.”

“Pity,” said Contrail, his gaze raking down Optimus’s frame with artificial boldness as the high grade steadily eroded his inhibitions. “You are quite comely, for a grounder.”

Clearly Optimus’s memory of the concoction’s potency had not failed him. Taking a small sip of his own drink, he discreetly obtained another off a passing tray and held it out, making an encouraging motion towards Contrail’s empty cube, “I am envious of those who manage to balance their political responsibilities and their personal lives.”

Contrail willingly switched cups and Optimus passed the empty cube to another serving bot dodging among the whirl and surge of the crowd. Contrail snorted, “It’s not _that_ difficult. If you’re too squeamish to use the buymech service, there are plenty waiting to line up for a spin in the Prime’s berth. Even that work-obsessed fragger Shockwave has a lover he keeps.”

“Really?” said Optimus. “That is surprising news. I had not heard anything of the sort.”

Contrail laughed, “It’s actually impressive how discreet they are. The newsfeed bots would trip themselves to get their hands on the designation of Shockwave’s squeeze.”

“His lover must be quite something. Another Senator?”

“So the Prime is not above gossip, eh? No, he’s a racer, a good one, for a mid-class bot.” Contrail’s tone indicated he found this scandalous. “And rather attractive. Has pretentions of grandeur I’m certain. What was his designation…ah, Blurr, that was right. A simple name for a simple bot, no doubt.”

Optimus smiled and sipped his drink, “No doubt.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More plot, more mystery, and new characters arrive on the scene. Happy reading as always and hope you enjoy it. :3
> 
> Betaed by [Reyairia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Reyairia/pseuds/Reyairia).

The doors of _The Bent Gasket_ hung open, spilling multicolored light and deafening, discordant music into the streets. A small, anonymous credit chip palmed by the hulking green mechanism that lingered near the entrance and Optimus slipped inside, battlemask fixed tightly over his face. An unforeseen boon of being lower caste than a typical Prime: he was one of thousands of his frametype. With his colors obscured by the pulsing lights, it was doubtful he would be recognized.

He muscled his way over to the bar, scanning the writhing bodies as he moved among them. The local tabloid newsfeed had produced a glossy image of Blurr, crested helm held high as he thrust a trophy towards a distorted and screaming crowd, but the same haze that allowed Optimus to pass among the revelers also hid his quarry from view.

“What can I get you, handsome?” Said the femme behind the bar, a short and squat creature with multifaceted optics and close to a dozen tentacle limbs rotating around her body, leaning in close to be heard over the growling bass of the music. As she spoke, two of her extra arms reached out and slid an ultraviolet purple cube across the bar towards a masked mech with long rotors hanging down his back.

“I am looking for someone.” Optimus said. 

“Aren’t we all?” She smirked. “Come to ask me what time I get off?”

“A bot who goes by the designation Blurr. I was told he often frequents your establishment.”

“Oh,” the flirtatious smile vanished. “He’s here tonight alright. But you’re better off trying your luck with someone else.” Her voice was heavy with disapproval.

“I appreciate the concern, but I am fully capable of handling myself.”

She snorted. “Not a lick of taste among the lot of you, I swear. Optics to the far wall, pilgrim, he’s probably on his third for the night.”

Across the sea of bodies Optimus could just catch a glimpse of a tall and lanky shadow entwined with another, moving purposefully. He nodded his thanks and began the task of edging around the crowd. By the time he reached the pair Blurr had the other bot hiked up against the wall, wings pressed flat to the surface. The small jet’s eager whimpers were clearly audible over the pitch and roll of the music.

“Blurr?” Optimus said. 

“Busy,” said Blurr shortly, not looking back at him.

“I need to speak with you.”

The jet managed to pull himself together enough to give a rude gesture over Blurr’s shoulder guard. “Don’t care,” said Blurr. “I’m not signing autographs right now.”

“I am with the Rodion police force,” said Optimus, pinging Blurr with his badge number out of habit. “And I might add that you are currently breaking at least three statutes for public lewdness.”

A datapacket, tagged with a handful of particularly rude markers, pinged against Optimus’s comlink. “My barrister’s information,” grunted Blurr. “You can bother him about it.”

“Charming,” said Optimus, his patience shortening. “I am not here about that. I am here about Shockwave.”

Blurr froze and the jet whined in protest.

“Well?” said Optimus.

The jet gave an outraged squall as Blurr ripped himself free, nearly dumping the smaller mechanism on the floor. Struggling to right himself and cover his interface components, the jet cuffed Blurr, “Slagger! What’s the idea?”

Blurr jerked his head, “Get lost.”

“The frag I’m gonna—”

His patience gone, Optimus leaned forward and ran a finger across the jet’s forearm guard. Holding up his hand, he showed them both a bit of fine crystalline substance that had come away. “Unless you would prefer to discuss how you managed to acquire some Polyhex Peril residue, I suggest you make yourself scarce.”

The jet blanched in alarm and scurried off, disappearing among the crowd. Optimus turned his attention to Blurr, who was standing rigid, his posture hostile.

“Who told you about Shockwave?” said Blurr, his optics washing out as a shifting beam of light fell across them.

“He is a friend,” said Optimus shortly. “Now, is there somewhere we can have a private discussion or would you prefer to do this here?”

Blurr’s optics flicked across the room towards the bar, where the femme tending it was watching them intently, “There’s a private room in the back we can use.”

The room, more of a glorified storage closet really, proved to be well-soundproofed and clear of bugs. Optimus rebooted his audio sensors to clear the irritant ringing left by the noise of the club. “Thank you.”

Blurr seated himself on a storage crate, optics wary, “What is it you want?”

“Information,” said Optimus. “Shockwave is missing. I thought you, as his lover, might shed some insight as to where he could have gone.”

Blurr’s mouth flattened. “We’re not lovers.”

“Not according to the gossip circuit in the Senate.”

Blurr groaned and covered his face. “I fragging knew it. Those slaggers on the newsfeeds are going to have a field day.”

“I take it you have not seen him recently?”

“Not for an orn and a half, but that’s not unusual. Fragger’s bonded to his job. I’m lucky if I see him four times in an orbital cycle.”

Optimus raised an orbital ridge. “Not lovers, you said?”

Blurr scowled. “What business is it of yours?”

“Shockwave is a dear friend, and I fear he may be in grave danger. Are you not concerned as well?”

Blurr’s face twisted and his optics darted. “Look, what Shockwave and I have is…complicated, but we’re both free agents. If he’s off clanging bolts with some other bot, or, scrap, even if he’s gone off on vacation to Luna-2, it’s no concern of mine.”

Optimus studied him, “Despite your own rather emphatic demonstration of your free status, I cannot say you are being all that convincing.”

Blurr’s energy field flared out, roiling with sublimated anger before he reeled it back in, “You don’t have any fragging idea what it’s like, do you? To be rolling along, minding your own business, giving the public what they want, and then to have some fragger waltz in casual as you please and turn your fragging life on its head.”

Optimus gave a small, wry snort. “I think I might know about that better than most.”

Blurr’s optics narrowed. “I’m not talking about some nonsense with holy relics, _Prime_. I’m talking about fraggers who turn you so thoroughly inside-out that it doesn’t matter who you’ve got under you, how tight they are or how pretty they whimper, all you can see is them. He broke the slagging rules. No one gets me. They get the celebrity, the racer, and that’s fine. They don’t get this.” He tapped the plating over his chest, and his voice shifted to something strangely plaintive and lost. “No one gets this. He broke the slagging rules.”

Optimus deliberately spread out his field, blanketing the room with soothing harmonics, and modulated his voice to a tone utilized in the force for negotiation. “While I may not have ever been as…expansive with my freedom as you are, I was not speaking of relics either.”  
Inside his chassis, the creature gave a small squirm.

Blurr was silent for a long time. Outside the music throbbed against the walls. At last, another datapacket pinged against Optimus’s comlink, this one lacking the insulting markers of before, or indeed any markers at all. It was blank in the way that only a skilled programmer could produce. “He gave me a keycode. Little place in Tetrahex, like I don’t have my own apartments. We’d meet up there sometimes.”

“Have you visited recently?”

“Haven’t dared.”

Optimus nodded in acknowledgement and did not press. “Thank you. If I am able to discern his whereabouts, I will send word as soon as it is safe.”

Blurr made a short, derisive gesture, “Don’t bother. If he wants to find me, he can. And get yourself a better fake badge next time. That one says “Retired” underneath your officer code.”

“Impersonate an officer of the law? Surely you know better than that. I’d have to get Springarm to arrest me.”

Blurr snorted. “Whatever. Good luck with your own fragger, Prime.”

The music pressed in around Optimus as they vacated the closet. Blurr gave him a distinctly lewd wink and nod for the benefit of the serving bot approaching down the corridor and moved off in the direction of the dance floor. Optimus slipped out the back of the club and into the alley. The door slammed shut behind him and his audio sensors rang with the sudden quiet. Luna-2 was just visible over the edge of the building towering above him and the sound of traffic had died to a low hum as offcycle progressed. He badly wanted to find Megatron and sink himself down beside him for the rest of the cycle, but business came before pleasure. He cycled his fans to clear his systems of heat and the scents of spilled high grade and ozone, and pinged Ratchet once more.

_"Any luck?"_

_"A possible location, and an access code."_ He burst it to Ratchet over a tightly encrypted channel. _"Though Tetrahex is a long way out. I will not be able to get there as soon as I would like."_

_"Senatorial session?"_

_"If only. They vastly prefer me as a figurehead to wave at the masses than doing any kind of real work. No, I have pricked their suspicions. I may need to lay low for a while, play the obedient.”_

_“I’ll see if the slagging xenobiologist has any contacts in Tetrahex then. I’d bet his buddies and Shockwave’s would run in the same circles. Now…”_ Ratchet’s voice changed to mock-teasing. _“You should be a good little bot and run away home before the sparkeaters get you.”_

Optimus chuckled. _“I promise I shall be the very image of duty and decorum.”_

_“Take care, Optimus, and good luck. Come see me an orn from now and we can take a look at the monstrosity in your chassis again.”_

_“Thank you, my friend.”_

The link went quiet and Optimus looked out into the streets, contemplating the time and his location. It would take him less than a joor to make Megatron’s apartments, but he could not stay for long. Not with oncycle nipping at his heels and the return journey to the Grand Imperium still to complete.

Still, the possibility hung there, tempting him.

He decided to take the long way back, the way that would pass him beside that section of Rodion, the streets he’d known so well as an officer. Shaking off the indecision, he moved towards the mouth of the alley to transform.

Electric pain ripped through protoform and processor and he reeled, trying to turn. Two figures wrenched at him, trying to drag him to ground. He struggled to pull his blaster free but they knocked it aside. The shock tore through him once more, and he had a brief glimpse of the message _Emergency Shutdown Imminent_ splashed across his optics before darkness swallowed him.

 

There was a leak developing in Megatron’s ceiling.

He stood beside the small puddle of solvent forming on the floor, frowning up at the bare pipes that ran above his head, colorfully marked with identifiers for their contents and direction of flow, and debating the wisdom of contacting the building manager over trying to fix it himself. On one hand, the manager possessed far better quality materials than Megatron could obtain on his limited salary, and despite his snide manner, would do the job well.

On the other hand, he would charge Megatron, and not cheaply, despite the fact that such repairs were supposed to be included as part of his payments, once every four orns.

Megatron scowled; perhaps he’d take a walk down to Solenoid’s Repair Shop and see if the bot had any sealant he’d be willing to pawn off on Megatron for a discount. He didn’t want to risk missing Optimus, but he doubted the other bot would show until after offcycle began and the leak would only grow if left. Not to mention that the building manager would shout if he discovered the leak before Megatron could report it. And then charge him double for the same repair.

Decision made, he left the apartment and began the long, winding journey down the twisting ramps that served as main access to the upper floors now that the freight elevator was broken. The streets hummed with traffic, but as Megatron prepared to transform and merge, a hand clamped around his arm.

“Got any spare shanix?” said a voice near his elbow.

Startled, he stared down into blue optics blown wide and crackling by circuit booster use. The bot, a small, compact creature with white helm fins, tugged at his arm again. “Well do you?”

“No,” said Megatron shortly, trying to retrieve his arm.

“They don’t have to be spare,” said the bot, his tone earnest as he clung tighter. “I can do you for whatever you like. Don’t tell me, big guy like you, you’d like my mouth, right? We can use the alley over there.” He jerked his head behind them. “It’ll take a breem, tops. For a hundred extra you can use my valve too.”

Megatron’s mouth flattened. “I’m not looking for a buymech. Please leave.”

“Don’t be like that,” said the bot, his voice dropping into a wheedling cadence that set Megatron dental plating on edge. “We all gotta make a living, right? I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Look,” said Megatron, trying once more to pull his arm free. “I realize that those boosters have probably fried your processor past any sort of usefulness, but I said _no_. Why don’t you take yourself down to Dead End? There’s a mech there with a clinic who can help you detox. His designation is—” His comlink pinged and he broke off in puzzlement, “Ratchet?”

_“Megatron, right? Optimus gave me your comlink, thank all that’s good and sane in the world. We have a problem."_

“Ratchet?” said the bot, the interior shutters on his optics spiraling impossibly wider. His last round of boosters was probably starting to peak before it would taper off. Booster and Syk use was strictly forbidden among the miners, enforced by random testing, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen, and Megatron had spent more than one offcycle watching over some newly built bot who’d succumbed to the temptation for oblivion.

 _“What is it?”_ said Megatron.

_“Optimus has dropped out of contact. I can’t raise him on any of his channels, and the direct line for official medical contact just gets me a bland message about the Prime not needing my services at this time. He’s not ‘missing’ - at least not officially - or the Senate and every newsfeed would be in an uproar, but something’s not right.”_

“I knew a Ratchet,” mumbled the bot, his weight sagging against Megatron’s arm as the boosters began to erode his motor control. “He was really nice to me. Actually, he yelled at me about the Syk, but he was really nice too.”

A chill passed through Megatron’s spark. He started to speak, but fell silent, acutely aware of his own helplessness. He was a _miner_ for Primus’s sake, what in all actuality was he capable of doing? _“What do we do?”_

 _“Nothing direct, for now,”_ said Ratchet, his voice grim. _“But Optimus had a lead in Tetrahex that I think we would do well to follow up on. The Senate’s going to close ranks for the moment and we need all the information about this slagheap we can get.”_

“I think I told him I’d get clean,” said the bot. “I guess I didn’t do so well with that.”

Though Megatron was not above demanding to be included in such a mission, he still found himself asking, _“Why me? I’m not an investigator.”_

Ratchet snorted, _“You’d have to ask Optimus that. He’s the one with a direct comline to our supposed creator. As for why I want you there, there’s a good chance you’re also in danger. You may be out of the spotlight, but you also haven’t got some fancy title protecting you. If they want you to disappear, you will.”_

_“When and where?”_

_“My clinic, and immediately.”_

_“I’ll be there.” ___

__Shutting off the line, Megatron tossed off a brief message to Impactor with a plea to cover his shift. He didn’t know if the other bot would actually do it, but he included a promise of high grade for an orn for good measure. If the other bot refused the offer, and Megatron did end up fragging off the right bots, well…it was doubtful it would matter much after that._ _

__Pausing, he considered the bot half nodded out against his arm for a moment. His processor chafed at the delay, but the bot really was in a bad way, and Ratchet might not appreciate Megatron abandoning one of his patients in the street. Sighing, he reached down and bodily lifted the creature, tossing him over his shoulder. The bot was so far gone he made no sound as his helm clanked against Megatron’s dorsal plating._ _

__“Where we going?” he mumbled dreamily._ _

__Megatron straightened and set off at as brisk a pace as he could manage in root form. “To see Ratchet.”_ _


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life and work continue to keep me busy but the story continues to unfold. Thanks so much to all my readers for your patience. Enjoy. :)
> 
> Betaed by [grimcognito](http://archiveofourown.org/users/grimcognito/pseuds/grimcognito).

“What’s all this then?” said Ratchet as Megatron turned to avoid winging the bot slung over his shoulder on the clinic door.

Megatron dumped the limp bot on one of the examination tables, “I would have expected ‘Good to see you’re still alive’.”

“It’s not as if we’ve been formally introduced,” said Ratchet, frowning down at the bot. “Why did you bring him here?”

“Said he knew you.”

“He would say that,” Ratchet said, his tone exasperated. “His name’s Drift, as I’m presuming he forgot to mention it.” He stepped away and opened one of the wall storage units, rummaging through it.

“A patient of yours?”

Ratchet went still. “Sometimes,” he said, his voice tight. He shook his head. “I’ll get him some detox formula. It’ll take about a joor to clear the Syk from his systems.” He made a brusque, dismissive gesture, though his field was edged with worry, “I’m still waiting on Perceptor to arrive anyway.”

Megatron watched Ratchet carefully as he turned Drift over, straightening his limbs and hooking him up to the coolant lines and temperature regulators attached to the table. Tilting Drift’s helm back with surprising gentleness, he injected one of the main energon lines with a syringe of fluid that glowed a deep red.

Drift squirmed in response to the prick, and presumably the fluid pushing into his lines. “Ratchet?” he mumbled.

“Yeah, kid,” said Ratchet quietly, withdrawing the needle and stroking Drift’s forearm guard with his free hand. “Looks like you got yourself in another spot of trouble.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” there was something impossibly weary in Ratchet’s tone. “Just recharge for now, you’ll be clearer in a bit.”

Drift murmured his assent and his system sounds dropped into a steady hum as he fell into recharge. Ratchet looked at the syringe in his hand, expression unreadable, before chucking it into a bin labeled for hazardous waste.

“Only sometimes then?” said Megatron quietly.

Ratchet’s mouth flattened and his optics flashed with anger, but it died almost as quickly as it had come, leaving his expression dull and weary, “First rules of being a medic. No patients, no complications,” his optics flicked back over towards Drift, “no addicts.”

“I thought the first rule would be ‘Do no harm’?”

“Smartaft,” amusement sparked briefly in Ratchet’s optics. “He’s all three, and I shouldn’t be his doctor, but there’s no one else to take him. Or others like him.”

“He seems to care for you.”

“Maybe he does,” said Ratchet, “but not like he cares for the Syk.” He jerked a thumb at nearby seat that looked far too rickety for Megatron’s comfort, and moved towards a tiny door in the back of the examination room, presumably his office, “Sit down for a bit. I’ll try to raise Perceptor again. If there’s no word, we’re heading to Tetrahex without him.”

Megatron seated himself gingerly. The seat creaked in an alarming manner under his weight but held and he let out a slow sigh, bracing one leg up on his knee. The lights in the clinic were low, serving the dual purpose of saving shanix and not aggravating optics made oversensitive by repeated Syk abuse. After a few awkward moments of sitting in silence, Megatron dug about in his subspace for his datapad and stylus and pulled up the essay on which he’d been working. Frowning at one of the glyphs, he deleted it and replaced it with one more precise in meaning. It still didn’t look right, but better.

“What you writing?”

Startled, Megatron looked up. Drift had come awake while he worked, optics soft and blue in the dim light. Strangely embarrassed to be caught, he shrugged, “Nothing important.”

“Then why are you writing it?”

“Because,” Megatron frowned at the datapad. “I don’t know. Because there are bots like you, I suppose, bots with no purpose. And bots like me, who are sparked with a purpose and that purpose dictates who we are for the rest of our lives. But mostly I am writing it because I want to, even though I am told I should not.”

The shutters on Drift’s optics spiraled slowly closed, one optic lagging, before opening again. “Where did you get the modules?” he said. As a miner, Megatron would have been brought online with minimal language modules, ones geared towards accounting and the limited vocabulary necessary to perform his function.

“The black market,” said Megatron. “I saved for them, seventy megavorns. They’re not perfect, but they do.”

“I didn’t get any specialized language mods,” said Drift, helm lolling and his optics sliding away. “They said I didn’t need them, and then they said they didn’t need me. Do you think I could do something like that? Write?”

“Perhaps,” said Megatron, watching him keenly. “But it is difficult to do so with a processor clouded by boosters.”

Drift made a small, quiet sound, “Not like I’d have much to say anyway.”

“I am not so sure,” said Megatron. “I think you might find you have more than you realize. How is your glyph recognition?”

“I can read,” said Drift sullenly. “Have to read the labels in the sewers so you don’t drink solvent instead of coolant.”

“Then here,” said Megatron. He closed the essay and opened up one of his poetry files. Drift made a clumsy reach for the pad and missed. Megatron caught his hand and carefully clamped the fingers around the edge of it before propping Drift’s arm against his own chassis, screen angled before his face. “Read, while I check on Ratchet.”

Letting go of the pad sparked an anxious itch in Megatron’s processor, but he pushed it aside. He had always hoped that his writing might be read, but leaving behind the sole, precious copy of his words made him nervous. Datapads broke, were lost, and while Megatron was fairly confident in his ability to recreate the salient points of his essays his processor was not designed for the purpose of data storage.

Yet the all-but-nameless mechanism on the berth behind him was clearly in need of something to grasp onto, and while Megatron doubted the ability of his own words to provide such a handhold, they were all he had.

He tapped on the door to Ratchet’s office. A shuffle from within and Ratchet pulled it back manually, another indication of where he must have cut corners regarding power. The medic looked aggravated, but no more so than he’d looked when Megatron had come through the door bearing Drift. “Anything?” said Megatron.

“Finally, yes,” said Ratchet. “To quote Perceptor, some ‘very strange mechanisms, my word’ were asking his coworkers about him and some things in his office were out of place, so he took the long way around. He’ll be here momentarily and we’ll go.”

“What about him?” said Megatron, jerking his head back in the direction of the main room.

Ratchet frowned, “I wish I could say he’d be safer here, but if mechs with ties to Optimus are being investigated I don’t want to think about what might happen if we leave him. And I don’t think he’ll be in much shape to move quickly by the time Perceptor gets here, slag it all.”

“I am capable of carrying him,” said Megatron, “but not in alt mode, and I think that will be required.”

“I can transport him,” said Ratchet. “My alt mode’s designed for it and he’s not that large, but we’re going to be a motley crew at best. We run into any security officers capable of telling their transistors from their diodes, we’ll be sunk.”

“Then we shall deal with any such problems as they arise,” said Megatron firmly. A chime from behind them as the clinic door announced the presence of a visitor. “We need to be going.”

“Fine, fine, your funeral,” said Ratchet. “And mine, and his, and probably Perceptor’s, but what’s life without a little excitement?”

Megatron ignored him and went to pry the door open, revealing Perceptor, hunched in the entryway and looking nervous.

“Thank you,” he said, as Megatron ushered him inside. “I sincerely apologize for the delay, I attempted to take the main road into Polyhex, but there was a significantly high number of security officers on patrol, so I had to take the long way around the city and come at Dead End from the—”

“We get the picture,” said Ratchet, disconnecting Drift, who it seemed had sunk back into unconsciousness while they spoke, from the various medical lines before moving into a space clear of berths and transforming. His alt mode was four wheeled, marked with the bright colors of medical transport. At first Megatron could see no place to set Drift, but then the aft end of the vehicle folded in on itself, mass and plating rearranging to form an open bed with high sides, “Put him here.”

Megatron plucked his datapad from Drift’s nerveless fingers and subspaced it. Scooping up the other mech, he deposited him in Ratchet’s bed, tucking in limbs and checking to see if he was secure. Ratchet shifted on his wheels, “That’ll do. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Megatron’s alt was far too large to permit transformation inside, so he shooed the other two out the door before shutting it firmly behind him, “What will your patients do?”

“Probably nothing,” said Ratchet, his tone weary. “But I’ve got a message in the door to tell them to head for the DMF if it’s an emergency. I’ve a few friends there who’ll be willing to help them in a pinch.”

“May I recommend the northeastern road?” said Perceptor. His alt was larger than Megatron would have expected given the gangly look of his root. “Fewer use it now that the mining outpost in the Maganese Mountains has run dry and it provides a more direct route into Tetrahex.”

“Fine, that’ll do,” said Ratchet. “Let’s just get on the road before we all rust.”

Megatron transformed, plating locking into place, rocking back and forth on the heavy treads of his alt to clear the stiffness. “Perceptor, take the front position. I will bring up the rear. With luck we may pass for a medical escort transporting a patient to a facility.”

Ratchet muttered something that might have been a prayer for patience and they set off, merging among the scattered vehicles and heading for the northeastern junction. The faint glow of optics in the shadows, the so-called undesirables, hiding from the acidic touch of the rain and the hunger of their fellows in the sewers, brightened as they passed, alerted to their presence. 

Tank churning within him, Megatron directed his visual sensors towards the distant dark spires of the Maganese Mountains, stabbing up against the twilight sky, and picked up the pace.

 

Optimus Prime woke to a splitting processor and blinding lights. Groaning, he slammed his optic shutters down and tried to lift his hand, only to find it brought up short by restraints.

His optics snapped on, fists curling. The mechanism leaning over him jerked back, the large, magnifying optic embedded in the right side of his face clicking and whirring as it refocused. The air was thick with the same acrid, hydrocarbon scent that lingered around Ratchet: medical facility then. He glanced around the room, smooth walls and a large ventilation duct in the ceiling above, no identifying features apart from the berth he was on to indicate where he had been taken. He pinged his internal navigation systems, but they only sent back a garbled message, likely still scrambled from the shock.

“Where am I?” said Optimus, focusing back on the mech beside him.

The mech folded his four arms before him, optics darting to the side, “I cannot answer that, Prime.”

“Then you know who I am.”

“Affirmative.” The mech shifted with unease.

“What is your designation?”

The mech’s optics spiraled wide in alarm, “That is irrelevant.”

“Why am I here?”

The mech wrung his many hands, “I cannot answer that.”

Optimus narrowed his optics, letting his voice pitch to the growl he’d used on a deputy caught embezzling Syk from the evidence locker, “Then bring me someone who can.”

The mech quailed and scurried out of sight. Tilting his helm, Optimus just caught a glimpse of the mech leaning out an open door, holding a hushed conversation. He twisted his wrists in the restraints, running his fingers down to touch the bolts that attached them to the berth.

Another mechanism approached, masked, with the jagged symbol that represented a sparkpulse reading etched in glowing biolights on his forearm guards. “I am Flatline.”

“Why am I here?”

“Because, Prime,” said Flatline. “You have worried your handlers with your erratic behavior, your secrecy concerning your medical condition.”

“My ‘medical condition’, as you put it, is being handled by a trusted physician. It will not interfere with my ability to carry out my duties. And erratic behavior? That is preposterous.”

“Is it?” said Flatline, his tone mild. “Sneaking out to visit seedy clubs at strange times, with no word to anyone and no guards? Trysting with rabble? I would say that sounds rather erratic to me.”

Optimus’s fingers tightened, scraping against the bolts. “Whom I chose to share my berth with is my affair and no other’s. And as for the visit to the club, it was made on business. May I remind you I spent vorns on the police circuit? I am capable of defending myself.”

“Apparently not capable enough,” said Flatline, cocking his head as he examined Optimus. “But any petty rebellion you chose to engage in is not my concern. Or rather, not why I was hired.” He reached out and tapped the center of Optimus’s chassis gently. “Just when were you planning on informing the Senate of your, rather severe I might add, coding glitch?”

Optimus’s optics spiraled open, but he clamped down hard on his field to keep it from broadcasting his alarm. The creature turned in his chassis, raking emphemeral or literal claws against his protoform and the bolts beneath his hands bit into the palms. He reset his vocalizer and spoke, voice steady, “It is not a coding glitch.”

Flatline snorted, “Do you think me a fool? Even a cursory scan shows you have a mass as long as my forearm nested in your chassis. Your ‘trusted physician’ is not the only one with medical training.”

“Irrelevant,” said Optimus. “To reiterate: it does not interfere with my ability to carry out my duties, and so it remains no business of the Sentate.”

“But that is not strictly true, is it?” said Flatline, regarding him with a shrewd air. “Or did you think your rather public demonstration of weakness in the Grand Imperium would go unnoticed?”

“It is not a glitch.”

“Then what is it?”

“It—” Optimus’s processor whirled. He was tempted to call it a miracle, but he had no idea if appealing to religious piety would have any impact on this particular mechanism. “It…”

Flatline made an impatient sound, “It matters not. I will have the opportunity to examine it soon enough, during the procedure.”

Something cold shot through Optimus’s spark. He’d heard the rumors, hushed mutterings among the convicts and criminals in Rodion’s underbelly, of a place mechs went and did not return.

Or when they did, they were…changed.

“What is this place?” he said hoarsely. The tensor cables in his wrists shrieked pain signals as he levered against the cuffs, straining. The bolts beneath his fingers creaked slightly.

“Haven’t you guessed?” said Flatline, reaching down to adjust something out of sight on the side of the berth. “Fornix, get back in here you sniveling little scraplet.”

The small mechanism shuffled back into the room, looking as though he wished he were anywhere else, “Flatline, sir…”

“I don’t want to hear it,” snapped Flatline, turning. Optimus’s fingers clamped tight around a bolt and began to twist. “Hands. Now.”

Fornix raised his palms miserably, flingers flexing as the gleaming mnemosurgery needles began to emerge from the tips. Flatline hummed in approval as he looked them over. “Very good, no fracturing or blunting. Wouldn’t want anything to go awry during the procedure.”

“No, sir,” said Fornix, his tone subdued.

“Good mech.” Flatline turned back to the berth, leaning over Optimus. “Welcome to The Institute, Prime. I do believe we’re ready to begin.”

The head of the bolt snapped off beneath Optimus’s fingers, shearing off and leaving behind jagged metal. “Gladly,” he said, and slammed his fist, restraint and all, into Flatline’s helm.

Flatline reared back, but Optimus was already switching his hold, slamming the other mech against the blunt platform of his own shoulder guard before flinging him into Fornix, who had already turned to flee. Wrenching the other wrist restraint free, Optimus tore himself from the table, catching himself before he could land flat on the floor. Flatline was struggling to rise and Optimus paused to plant a kick in a particularly sensitive part of his frame. The medic let out a wheeze and went limp. His frame aching, Optimus bent and snatched up Fornix where he sprawled on the floor. Staggering over to the door, he wrenched it open and shoved the other mechanism through it.

“Stand down!” he bellowed. “I have a hostage!”

A chorus of frightened yelps and then some enterprising mechanism must have activated an alarm system. Klaxons began to wail and deep red lights flashed, further disorienting Optimus. Growling, he barged through the door, using Fornix to knock aside a mechanism, another mnemosurgeon perhaps, running up to stop him. It was strange that that there weren’t any guards present—

Blaster fire streaked by, burning a hole in the wall behind him.

Never mind.

Wielding Fornix like a battering ram, Optimus made for the guards. The first, a huge orange creature with staring, lamplike optics, lumbered forward, trying to snatch at him. He ducked beneath its clumsy swipe and swung Fornix against its legs. It stumbled and staggered, tipping over with a cacophonous crash and Optimus tossed Fornix into its lap before diving for the blaster mag-clamped to its dorsal plating.

Rolling, he rose, clutching the weapon, “Much better,” he said, and fired.

The surgeons shrieked and ducked, only to realize too late that he hadn’t been aiming for them.

_“Don’t go waving that around in here,” snapped Ratchet, snatching the blaster out of his hand. “I keep sweet oil of vitriol in here, to calm the Syk spasms and clean the floor. Do you have any fragging idea how flammable it is?”_

The plasma bolt from Optimus’s blaster hit the, conveniently labeled, tanks on the far side of the room and a firestorm erupted.

The concussion from the blast knocked Optimus off his feet. Heat from the backdraft seared across him, scorching plating and protoform. His audio sensors rang from the unimaginable noise and somewhere deep in him the creature clawed and writhed in panic. But he accomplished his goal.

The wall of the Institute gaped open. Through the haze of smoke and flame Optimus could see open, desolate countryside. They must have transported him a distance from the cities, but there was no time to be picky.

Lurching to his feet, he staggered forward and dived through the opening, just managing to keep his feet as he charged forward, unable to even transform until he shed the remains of the restraints on his wrists and ankles. The ground crunched and crumbled strangely beneath his feet. Behind him he could hear screams and shouts but did not dare look back.

_Keep going, keep going, keep going—_

The ground cracked and shattered beneath him and he had just enough time to think _Of course they’d build it on the edge of the Mitteous Plateau._ before he tumbled headlong into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the curious, “sweet oil of vitriol” is a defunct term for the anesthetic and solvent [diethyl ether](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethyl_ether), vitriol referring to the fact it’s produced with sulfuric acid. It is extremely flammable. ;3c
> 
> [Fornix](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fornix_of_the_brain) is Latin for “vault”, but also used as a term for a part of the brain associated with long term memory. He’s an OC, or rather [an unnamed background character](http://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/c/c7/The_institute_Shadowplay2.jpg), but I wanted to give him a head or brain-based name in honor of James Roberts’ naming convention for bots associated with the Institute.
> 
> And, on a slightly unrelated note, I found out I got fanart! [Gorgeous](http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=46353587), [beautifully smutty](http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=46254176) fanart. So while there's no porn in this chapter go forth and enjoy the pretty pictures! X3


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, dear readers, the long-awaited, or perhaps not-so-long-awaited birth scene. XD Thank you for your patience and your support and as always, enjoy. :)
> 
> Betaed by [grimcognito](http://archiveofourown.org/users/grimcognito/pseuds/grimcognito). Your continued encouragement means the world to me.

The road out of Polyhex rose several mechanometers in elevation as they moved along it, winding up into the foothills of the Maganese Mountains. Megatron tried to keep his visual sensors trained on Ratchet, but he couldn’t help allowing his gaze to wander across the landscape, buildings and mechanisms alike growing sparser as the city grew more distant. His chronometer told him it was nearly onshift cycle, but there was none of the bustle and noise to indicate the changing time. For the first time in his function he found himself aware of the absence of sound, no grind of mining equipment, no squeal and whine of wheels, no shouts and laughter.

Silence, he realized. He was hearing silence.

The thought was novel and overwhelming, and as all such moments did, it made him itch for his datapad. He could not conceivably ask them to delay, and yet that did not stop him from aching for his stylus, to capture some of the alien beauty of the moment.

“You okay back there?” said Ratchet.

“Yes,” said Megatron. “I’ve never been this far from the cities before.”

“Not much to see,” said Ratchet. “No mechs, no buildings, no lights, nothing but slagging emptiness. Couldn’t pay me to live somewhere so lonely.”

Megatron thought of the endless crowds of strangers, bleak faces looking through him as mechanisms scurried about their lives, isolated habitation units nested next to one another, unknown designations of mechs that he heard laugh and scream and wail and interface. “I suppose so,” he said.

“One of my colleagues has a field site in the Maganese Mountains,” said Perceptor. “Sometimes he talks about how the light reflects off the peaks just before onshift cycle, the silver-steel look of it all ringed in fire. Not literally of course, the quality of the light is a result of—that is, he says it’s beautiful, that someone should paint it.”

“Why not him?” said Megatron.

“He’s not a painter,” said Perceptor, as though it were obvious.

They drove in silence. The desolate grey of the land around them lightened, growing silver and reflective as they climbed higher. The road grew rougher beneath them, treads catching on their wheels. It slowed Megatron very little, his alt was adapted for moving through hand-hewn tunnels, but Ratchet groused and grumbled as he bounced along the path.

“I swear,” said Ratchet, “when I get back to civilization the first thing I’m—” He broke off, voice dropping to a low, tense register, “Trouble, up ahead, half a click.”

Megatron started to ask what he meant, but then they rounded a curving section of path and he saw it.

A checkpoint, two armed guards.

“Oh dear,” said Perceptor. “What do you recommend?”

“Frag it all,” said Ratchet. “Follow my lead.”

The guards straightened as they drove closer, rolling to a halt before the small station. The taller of the two guards, a green and yellow mech, readjusted his blaster. “What do we have here?” he said.

“Medical transport,” said Ratchet shortly, “Medical officer Ratchet, taking a patient to another facility for specialized care.”

The guard hummed to himself as he looked over Megatron and Perceptor, “And these two?”

“Escorts.”

“Strange choices for escorts,” said the guard, lifting his blaster and allowing it to rest on his shoulder guard. “What are you?” he addressed Perceptor. “Some kind of bodyguard?”

“Er,” said Perceptor. “That is, you see—”

“No facilities,” blurted out the smaller guard, a teal and orange bot who up until this point had been staring at them, body twitching with nervous energy.

“What?” said the first guard.

“No facilities,” repeated the mech. “Only Tetrahex up that way. Had a buddy who lived in Tetrahex. Had to take him to Polyhex when he got the cosmic rust. Didn’t have a specialist in the city.”

“Really now?” said the othe guard. His grip tightened on his blaster. “Now that’s very interesting.”

_“Get ready to run for it,”_ said Ratchet over the comms.

“We are not going to a medical facility,” Megatron burst out. “This is a medical transport, but our destination is elsewhere.”

The guard’s helm turned in his direction, “Is that so? Then where are you going?”

“The temple of the Guiding Hand,” said Megatron, processor racing. “He,” he shifted himself forward to indicate Drift, still insensate in Ratchet’s cargo hold, “is highly religious. His final wish was to be allowed to pray at the temple before he offlined. We are his friends; we wanted to be present during his final cycles.”

The guard regarded Drift with a dubious optic, “He does look pretty pathetic, but you sure he’s dying?”

“Cybercrosis,” said Ratchet. “Quick, devastating, and as I’m sure you know, completely incurable.” His voice dropped to a quiet and confidential tone, “Normally I’d let the poor mech expire at my clinic, but I suppose I’m getting to be a soft touch in my old age.”

The guard snorted, “Waste of time and resources if you ask me. This one has the look of a booster about him.”

“So,” said Ratchet smoothly, as though he had not heard. “Since this little misunderstanding is cleared up, we’ll be on our way?”

The guard scowled, “Fine, get a move on.”

They sped on, down the peak and into a narrow valley, but Megatron’s fans did not start working properly again until they rounded another ledge and the checkpoint was lost to view. In front of him, Ratchet let out a shuddering sigh, “I’m getting too old for this slag.”

“I was under the impression that you were not even old enough to recall Nova Prime personally.”

“Shut it, youngster,” said Ratchet. “Old spark, not old frame, though that’ll wear out soon enough too if we keep this up. How far to the city?”

“Ten clicks ahead,” said Perceptor, voice cheerful if a bit wavering. “Though if the dust clouds move I believe we should be able to see—ah, there it is.”

Tiered and walled, Tetrahex rested upon a sharp ledge hacked into the side of a towering silver mountain, the fringes of the city hugging the rippling edges of the cliff as they narrowed and dwindled into nothingness in the haze. From such a distance, Megatron could only make out the largest of the buildings, his optical sensors were calibrated for accuracy over short distances and in endless darkness, but he could see the blue spires of the prayer-towers, stiff and geometric, a stark contrast to the golden domes of Iacon, jutting up among the low-lying buildings. A vast, dry moraine carved its way down the cliff backing the city, the deep cracks drawing to a point behind a massive building with five pronged towers.

“The temple of the Guiding Hand,” said Perceptor. “The legend goes that energon used to spring right out of the ground from the mountain’s peak, unrefined but pure enough to drink from the source. The temple was built at the base of the falls, an oasis for pilgrims and travelers in the mountains.” He paused, “If you believe that sort of story of course.”

“Load of slag if you ask me,” said Ratchet. “They found crystalline traces of energon deposits in the bed of the falls, but they predate the building of the temple by at least three thousand meta-cycles.”

“You’ve read Drillbit’s work then?” said Perceptor, perking up. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in such a thing.”

“They had a seminar at the Institute for Higher Programming,” said Ratchet hastily. “I’d just finished my licensing exams and was bored of getting overcharged.”

“Ah,” said Perceptor. “And you?” he addressed Megatron. “Are you familiar with any of his research?”

“The overseer keeps a copy of _A Visual Guide to Energon Deposits_ in his office,” said Megatron, “but I have never read it.”

“Oh,” said Perceptor, suddenly awkward, as though he’d forgotten himself. “I see.”

“City gates half a click,” said Ratchet.

The arched structure, framed by two towers, loomed over them. The heavy gates, etched with geometric designs and harsh cuneiform markings, were flung wide and mechanisms moved through them in a steady trickle.

“Primal Vernacular,” said Perceptor as they rolled through the gates. “I don’t read much myself, but I’ve been told those are the designations of the members of the Guiding Hand.”

Ahead, a large crowd clustered around the base of one of the prayer towers, helms tilted upwards towards a vidscreen embedded in the wall. On the screen, a static-riddled image of a red mechanism flickered and flashed.

“That’s the Iaconian Newsfeed Service,” said Ratchet as they moved closer. “What would they—”

_“—I’m afraid there’s not much information being released at this time, but we do have confirmation of an explosion at a medical facility where the Prime was receiving care. It’s not clear at this time whether the incident was an assassination attempt or an accident, but despite the Senate’s silence on the specifics, it is plain to see for anyone who cares to look—”_

The camera panned to a towering structure and Megatron’s spark lurched, his wheels locking up.

_“That the Matrix Flame has gone out.”_

 

_Initiating Reboot Sequence_

_Rebooting…_

_Systemwide Damage Report: minimal_

_Sensory systems: functional._

_Energon levels: low. Advisory: refuel_

Optimus onlined his optics.

Lifting his aching helm, he peered about the small cavern into which he had crashed. The ceiling hung low above him, far too close to permit him to stand upright and too riddled with stalactites should he have the inclination to try. Faint light filtered in from above him and his optics whirred and clicked as they adjusted to the gloom. Cautious, he pushed himself to his knees and sat back to take stock of his position.

It was then that he noticed the body sprawled on the floor not two arms lengths away from him.

He tensed, thinking for a moment that one of the mechs from the Institute had followed him, but then he realized that the corpse was sprawled in such a way that it was impossible it should have fallen behind him. Indeed it looked to have been there for some time, frozen in the act of crawling on its belly. One arm was stretched forward, reaching towards Optimus, and as he leaned forward he could see that its legs were severed at the knee joint, ragged stumps that no longer leaked energon, long dead.

Still, the unfortunate creature had clearly been seeking something when it expired; Optimus followed the line of its outstretched limb and his spark leapt.

Energon cubes, three of them, scattered on the floor of the cave where they must have fallen when the mech crashed through the roof. Shaking, he scooted across the floor and lifted one, wiping the dust from the surface. The cavern brightened as he swept it away and he cracked the corner of the cube, pulling back his battlemask and lifting the cube to his mouth.

It was nothing more than midgrade, not even that well refined, but his systems lit up at the taste of it, greedily drinking in the energy. Inside his chassis, the creature squirmed, spurred to movement by the influx of charge.

He did not stop until the entire cube was empty, sitting back and letting it drop to the floor beside him as he drew in deep drafts of air. Offlining his optics, he rested for a moment, allowing himself to mouth a little prayer of thanks as he gathered himself for the task of finding his way out.

Something pinged in his systems, urgent and unfamiliar. Frowning, he onlined his optics just in time to see the internal message scroll across them:

_Emergence protocols: activated_

_What in the name of—_ he thought and then agony ripped through his chassis.

He shouted, more out of shock than pain, crumpling over as he clutched at his chestplates. Gasping, he tried to turn, slumping over on his side, body curling in protective instinct. Inside him, the creature clawed and fought, tongues of white, jagged fire against his unguarded protoform.

There or not at all, Ratchet had said and Optimus moaned, clawing at his chest as the creature turned over and his systems screeched at him. Shoving himself back to his knees, he braced on his hands, struggling to hold himself up as his chestplates creaked open. The creature wriggled and went still, the pain ebbing for a moment. Panting, Optimus lifted his helm, and froze.

The corpse’s visor was online, glowing brilliant blue in the dim light, and it was looking straight at him.

“Um,” it said. “Please tell me you’re here to rescue me and not a hallucination.”

Before Optimus could think to answer, the creature shifted again and he cried out, elbow joints nearly buckling. His fingers bit into the floor of the cave and his dorsal struts wrenched as a great fist clenched around his spark, frame straining towards something that he could neither articulate nor imagine. The creature thrashed and Optimus’s helm sagged, gaze dropping to the yawning canyon of his chassis, attention focused inwards as components shifted, independent of his will. Several small cables, barely the thickness of one of his fingers, thrust out from the nest of circuitry beneath his spark chamber and latched onto the edge of his chassis, prongs clamping down. Wires twisted and from within the gap he caught a glimpse of a flash of orange, a single burning point of light.

And then another joined it.

The mechanism he’d presumed dead yelped in terror and Optimus’s fans stuttered and stalled. The twin orange lights fixed on his own optics and Optimus’s plating rose, protoform prickling in alarm.

_Nickle, iron, cobalt, chrome_

A half-sentient sparkeater, Ratchet had said.

At the edge of Optimus’s awareness, he could hear the other mech chanting ‘Oh Primus Below’, over and over. Shaking, he lifted one of his hands and held it before his chassis, palm open, and prayed.

The lights vanished and the cables tightened as the creature began to extricate itself, pain flashing through his neural net as it tugged and tore circuitry, limbs flailing as it emerged. At last, a final wriggle, a starburst of agony and something small and wet dropped into his hand.

The creature’s cables spilled over his palm, a wriggling nest of serpents, prongs flexing and grasping, but Optimus could see now that it was bipedal, four limbs and a head, features sharp and pointed. It was utterly without color, the slick silver-grey of new protoform and Optimus’s tanks roiled at the flayed-bare look of it.

The creature kicked out, orange lamplike optics flickering on and off, and the tiny EM field buffeted against Optimus’s own, flashing signals of startled curiosity. Despite its determined struggles, the newspark seemed as surprised to be present in the outer world as Optimus was to see it there.

Cautiously moving his hand clear, Optimus triggered the command to close his aching chassis. His self-repair systems were already pinging him as they ground to life, repair nanites swarming towards the path cut by the newspark. Slowly he sat back on his knees, helm ducked to clear the stalactites above him and stared at it.

It let out an incoherent binary peep and reached for him, tiny cables stretching and waving. He offered it his free hand and several latched around his fingers, tugging with surprising strength. Strangely fascinated, he allowed his field to ripple with a warm, nonverbal greeting.

Its optics lit brighter and it began to squirm avidly, field flashing rapid emotional signals, an incoherent if enthusiastic jumble of data. He switched his field to a soothing hum and it quieted, cables tightening around his fingers, determination spiking in its field.

It wanted.

His unease calming, he brought it close and allowed it rest on his chassis, hand cupped to support it. Its field flashed a positive response and its small clawed hands curled against his chestplate, tiny helm pressing against the hum of his spark that radiated through his armor.

Lifting his helm, he attempted to reorganize his processor. The mech across from him appeared frozen, optic visor wide and horrified. “Are you,” Optimus cleared the static from his vocalizer and repeated himself. “Are you alright?”

The mech let out a high-pitched noise that might have been a laugh, “Oh no, I’m fine. Just, you know, trying to decide whether I’m going to pass out or if I already did.”

“What is your designation?”

“Tailgate,” said the mech. “I, um, I was on my way to uh, a jobsite. Ship launch, kind of important. I fell in. I’m, uh, probably late.”

“I think you shall be forgiven,” said Optimus. “You are rather badly injured.”

“Is this the part where I say I can’t feel my legs?” said Tailgate. “Because you don’t have to break that to me, I sort of already know.”

“We need to get you to a medic.”

Tailgate laughed again, voice edged in hysteria, “You sure I’m the one who needs a medic?”

“My medical condition has…for lack of a better term, resolved itself.”

“That’s a Pit of a resolution,” said Tailgate, optics fixed on the newspark curling in Optimus’s palm. “I’m no doctor, but I’ve never seen a medical condition that does _that_.”

“It is newly discovered. As far as I know, I am the only one thus afflicted.”

“You mean it’s not contagious? I’m not going to have little bots crawling around eating my insides?”

“It, he, is not a scraplet,” said Optimus. “He is a newly sparked mechanism.”

“Why is he so small then?”

Optimus had to think for a moment. The obvious answer was that the newspark was small so he could fit inside Optimus’s chassis, but Tailgate’s question forced his processor into a novel perspective, circuitry making new, careful connections. Slowly, he said, testing the words, “I presume, I presume he will grow.”

The thought was strange and overwhelming. Growth was for energon crystals, the rebuilding of damaged frames, the recreation of what once was or the subject of deep time. The idea that the small mechanism in his hand might one cycle stand before him as a full-sized being threatened to overclock his processors and he shunted it aside, drawing in deep breaths.

“If you say so,” said Tailgate, his field flashing with nervousness. “But that aside, uh, we should probably get out of here.”

Optimus frowned at the newspark, considering the small, waving cables. Leaning forward, he shifted his central dorsoscapular plating through a partial transformation, opening up a small, partially shielded gap at the base of his helm. Lifting the newspark, he reached behind his helm, palm open.

The newspark was quiet for a moment and then he felt the tickle of cables, sliding across exposed protoform, latching onto the edges of Optimus’s plating and pulling the little creature into the space, turning round as it investigated its new port. Cables locked and drew taut, anchoring the newspark in place and Optimus felt its tiny field flash with triumph and excitement.

Then two small cables sought out energon lines, a long spine sliding out of each one, and drove into them.

Optimus yelped and nearly tore the newspark from its mooring, groping behind his helm. The newspark squeaked, field a storm of distress and confusion. Freezing, his fingers just touching the newspark’s tiny helm, Optimus ran a brief self-diagnostic. Two small leaks, a steady trickle, but he could feel no energon dripping from the punctures. No longer disturbed, the newspark churred with pleasure, field pulsing satiation and contentment.

Impossibly, it appeared to be…refueling through the painful connection.

The realization left him off-balance. Though he moved through all levels of caste to perform his function he still heard the sneers, the condemnation. Barbaric creatures you know, leakers. What sort of filthy sub-mechanism feeds from another’s lines?

And yet beneath the wave of learned revulsion, new programming purred through his processor, assuring him all was right with the world. Counter-intuitively, the newspark drawing energon from him felt pleasant, provoking a sensation of calm and happiness that he’d not felt since he’d parted from Megatron.

Was this what those in the gutters felt? Was the strange practice a mere act of desperation or did those who engaged feel even a shadow of the tranquility that enveloped Optimus’s processor?

Disturbed, he turned his attention to the more prosaic issue presented by the newspark’s actions and retrieved the two remaining cubes of energon from where they had fallen. Sliding one towards Tailgate, one of that size should more than sufficient for a mech so small, he opened the other and drank.

Propping himself as best as he could on his elbows, Tailgate withdrew his mask, exposing a tiny, primitive intake, and bent to the task of consuming the energon, pressing the flat, awkward aperture against the surface of the cube and tipping it to allow him to drink. 

Optimus raised an orbital ridge, frowning. He’d not seen such a configuration on a mechanism in over a million meta-cycles, certainly not since his own forging. He glanced at the remains of the tiny trailer which had held the energon cubes, noting the shape of the rust-riddled structure.

“This launch,” he said slowly. “The one that you fear you are late for, what sort of mission is taking place?”

“Oh!” said Tailgate, visor brightening. “It’s super important! Commissioned by the Prime himself, you know. They’re trying to navigate safe passage through the Benzuli Expanse.”

Optimus’s spark curled with unease, “And the name of the vessel?”

“Brand new Vanguard-class Interceptor,” Tailgate beamed. “They’re calling her the _Ark_.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long wait, readers. Life (and work) has kept me quite busy this past month or so. ~~Plus there was that period around Christmas where I got distracted by by writing porn, my bad.~~. Also, based on feedback that you guys are leaving, I've been taking some time to sort out a few things in the outline of the story. So know that even though I am often horrible at responding to comments in a timely manner (see RL, unceasing adventure that it is), I do make sure to read and consider them for future chapters. Happy reading as always and thank you for your continued support. :)

“And Siphon wanted to replicate the study, but the Senate wouldn’t approve the funding, and then they closed ranks and forbade scientific access under the claim that the Matrix and all material associated with it were classified as holy relics,” Perceptor babbled. “So the results were inconclusive. Er, rather, not inconclusive but not statistically significant enough to claim that—”

“Shut it,” said Ratchet, and Perceptor clamped his mouth tight. Ratchet hiked Drift further against his side, where the half-conscious mech was slipping down, and cast a searching look over Megatron. “I think what the half-processor glitch is trying to say is, Matrix Flame or no Matrix Flame, we can’t go jumping to conclusions until the Senate produces a body. And even then I’d want to do an autopsy personally,” he muttered. His optics narrowed, “What I want to know is: are you alright?”

Megatron wondered if a spark that felt as though it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen classified him as ‘alright’. “I still function,” he said shortly. “And we have a task to complete.”

Ratchet scowled. “Don’t feed me slag and call it gelled energon, but fine, have it your way. We’ve come this far, might as well. Wasn’t like I had a brilliant career ahead of me anyhow.”

“Shockwave’s apartments are located in Upper Tetrahex,” said Perceptor, sounding utterly relieved to be changing the subject. “About two clicks walk into the city. We’ll have to pass by the Temple of the Guiding Hand to get there.”

“Just what we need,” said Ratchet. “Tourists.”

“We are also tourists,” Megatron pointed out.

“Exactly,” said Ratchet. “No one will look twice at a few nobodies from Iacon and Polyhex. We can blend.” He hefted Drift in Megatron’s direction. “Come on, help me with him.”

They must have made quite the bizarre sight as they frog-marched Drift through the streets of Lower Tetrahex, Perceptor trailing in their wake. The towers of the Temple loomed over them, glowing violet tips just visible among the rolling dust clouds. Up close, Megatron could see they curved slightly inward, the clawed fingers of a great hand. The air buzzed with unfamiliar, all-consuming sound, like the echo of ringing picks and axes in the mining tunnels, rising and falling.

Ratchet shook his helm sharply, as though to clear his vents. “What the scrap is that?”

“Song is the traditional method of prayer in Tetrahex,” said Perceptor, hunched awkwardly close to Ratchet as he glanced behind them nervously. “Scholars in the Primal Vernacular often insist that it is a lyrical language, and the only way to grasp the true meaning of a sentence is to sing it.”

“That is _not_ singing,” said Ratchet. “I’ve heard broken machinery make more melodic noises.”

“Yes, well, that would probably be the amplification,” Perceptor said “Or, uh, the Tetrahexian accent. It can be rather grating if you’re not used to it.”

The crowd around them grew thicker, pushing them closer to the open temple gates. Ratchet tensed and bristled as mechs buffeted against him, but Megatron ignored the bump of plating and energy field. Personal space was a rare commodity in the mines.

“Be calm,” he said quietly, as Ratchet’s energy field grew jagged. “You are not trapped.”

“I know that,” snapped Ratchet, though his field pulsed with repressed alarm. “You want to be a nagging nuisance, tell me where Perceptor is.”

Megatron’s helm jerked up, and he scanned the crowd. Sure enough, Perceptor had vanished into the seething, colorful mass. Around them mechanisms hummed and rumbled in song, helms crowned with glowing mersennes in a rainbow of ultraviolet colors. “Where did he—?”

“Frag it all,” Ratchet hissed, “we don’t have _time_ for this. If that blasted glitch doesn’t—”

A hand slipped into Megatron’s free one and he jumped.

“Don’t look up,” said Perceptor. “We’re being watched. Put these on.” Three small mersennes were clasped in his hand, another already fixed to the top of his helm, a tiny beacon of yellow light. “Pass them to the others.”

“Pick pocketing, Perceptor?” Ratchet said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Perceptor. “There’s a stall selling them at the edge of the temple courtyard. Now put them on.”

Megatron set the small crimson mersenne atop his own helm. It tingled slightly as it magnetized in place and he reached over to steady Drift’s lolling head so that he could affix a green one. He passed the blue to Ratchet.

Ratchet took it but paused, scowling. “This is ridiculous.”

“What’s going to be ridiculous is if we get hauled in for questioning by that guard wearing Proteus’s sigil near the market entrance,” said Perceptor. “And besides, if we’re going into the temple, there’s no need to be rude.”

Ratchet’s mouth went tight, but he jammed the mersenne on his head anyway as the crowd bore them through the gates into courtyard. Perceptor herded them towards the walls, lined with arched entranceways. “Explain to me why we’re wasting time with this metaphysical nonsense.”

“I’d argue that few things that bring comfort to the suffering are a waste of time,” said a voice. “Though I must say, ‘guardian of metaphysical nonsense’ does have a delightfully absurd ring to it.”

Ratchet whirled, half-dragging Drift out of Megatron’s grip. A sleek, white jet model, his wings and helm marked with red and gold, wearing a mersenne that glowed an ultraviolet purple, lifted his hands in a placating gesture belied by the massive sword slung across his back.

“I told you I had a contact in Tetrahex,” said Perceptor. “He’s one of the Temple guardians. This is Wing.”

“Welcome,” said Wing, smiling, even as his gaze swept across the crowd. “Perceptor indicated that you might be in a bit of trouble.”

“Do you have somewhere private we can discuss it?” said Perceptor.

“Of course,” said Wing. “My quarters are two floors up, and there is energon. If you please.”

The insides of the tower to which he led them were narrow and dim, the translucent walls permitting only a fraction of the light from the city outside to enter.

“In the old days, when the source still flowed, energon would have been pumped through the walls on its way to the city, to light them” said Wing, a touch of wistfulness in his tone. “I’m too young to have seen it of course, but an old pilgrim who passed this way said he remembered it.”

“Wasteful display,” Ratchet muttered.

“Wasteful?” said Wing. “Perhaps so. It did take a large number of employees to maintain the piping, does so still. So many that we must often go outside those associated with the temple and seek among those who have had their function replaced for laborers.”

Ratchet’s optics flared bright and his mouth flattened.

Wing sighed as he ushered them up a set of winding stairs and down a short hallway. “Not that I suppose it matters any longer. Energon has not flowed from these mountains for millennia, nor is it likely to.”

“Then why the maintenance?” said Ratchet.

“The leaders of the temple still have faith,” said Wing. “And were we to let it fall into disrepair, it would be the weakest among us that would suffer when their alms of shanix and energon dried up.” He raised an orbital ridge at Ratchet. “If what Perceptor has told me of you is true, our beliefs may be different, but our purpose is the same.”

Ratchet scrutinized him, but did not answer.

They paused at a set of quarters at the end of the hall, and Wing palmed the doors open. The rooms were small, and simply furnished, but there was sufficient seating for them all. Or all of them minus a fainting Drift.

“Here,” said Wing. “Put him in my berth. He can recharge there.”

Ratchet looked like he wanted to object, but he tugged at Drift. Megatron gave him over and watched as they maneuvered the mech through an open door and down onto a narrow berth. Ratchet caught Drift’s flopping arms and moved them to rest upon his chassis, before reaching up to brush his hand across Drift’s helm. Drift shifted, restless, but did not wake.

“Perhaps it might be better if he remained here,” said Wing, his voice so low that Megatron had to strain to catch it.

“Fine,” said Ratchet, half-distracted, biolights flashing as he scanned Drift. “He’d probably be safer here anyway. We can pick him up on the way back—”

“I meant on a more permanent basis.”

Ratchet stiffened, his face twisting through a myriad of emotions. “He needs medical care,” he ground out at last.

“We have a clinic,” said Wing. “Our facilities are specially equipped to house and care for those who have nowhere to go. And while the medic who runs the clinic may not be as well-known as yourself,” Wing’s tone was mildly rebuking, “she is also an addictions specialist.”

Ratchet’s optics widened and his field flashed with unrestrained energy before his face shut down. “For the record,” he said, voice deadly quiet, and Megatron eased himself a little closer to the open door as Perceptor shot him a worried look. “I’ve also had the coursework on addiction.”

Wing inclined his helm slightly. “I am not questioning your skill, merely that your friend might be better served by one not so…close to the spark of the matter.”

Ratchet’s mouth tightened, “Be careful what you insinuate.”

“I insinuate nothing,” said Wing. “If your conscience pricks at you it is none of my affair.”

For a moment Ratchet seemed to swell with rage, but then Drift twitched on the berth, his face scrunching as bleary optics blinked on and Ratchet deflated, aiming a feeble shove at Wing to move him out of the way as he bent over the berth. “Kid?”

“Ratchet?” Drift mumbled. “Processor aches.”

“The boosters’ll do that,” said Ratchet. “Do you remember where you are?”

Drift squinted and focused. “Not in Polyhex.”

“Close enough,” said Ratchet. “We’re at the Temple of the Guiding Hand.” His face went stiff, mouth working for a moment. “They have facilities here, where they can take care of you. Give you proper medical care and get you cleaned up, safe places to recharge and energon. I think…I think it might be best if you stayed with them.”

It took Drift a few moments to process this. “You’re…you’re not taking me back to the clinic?” his voice was strangely forlorn. “Is it because of the Syk? I swear I tried but it just hurt so bad and then I…I’ll do better. I promise I’ll do better.”

Ratchet’s face crumpled and Megatron found himself looking away from the raw pain. “No, kid,” he said hoarsely. “It’s not because of the Syk. It’s because they can help you here, and I can’t.”

“But you’re a good doctor,” said Drift. “You’re the best.”

“You’ll do better here,” said Ratchet. “But you have to want to stay. They can help you, but you have to want it.”

“You’ll enjoy it here,” said Wing, stepping up beside Ratchet. “There are many others like you, who came from the streets. There’s safety and clean energon and work and education available if you want it.”

“Education?” said Drift. “Like language modules?”

Wing nodded, “We have those available. Several levels of advancement, and lessons in Primal Vernacular are standard.”

Drift frowned, processor working, before lifting one uncoordinated arm and waving it in Megatron’s direction. Megatron frowned, but stepped closer, pushing down his unease as Wing turned to look at him.

“Can I…can I have a copy?” said Drift.

“A copy?” said Megatron, frowning.

“The poems.”

“Oh,” Megatron had never considered copying his work to another pad, the one in his possession had been nearly beyond his means, though he’d been in the process of saving for another in case it broke. It would have been better to hire out the services of an archival model, but those were generally only accessible to the higher-ups. “I do not have another copy.”

“I can help with that,” said Wing, stepping away and rummaging amongst his belongings. “Ah, here we go.” He held out a blank datapad to Megatron, as though it were nothing, merely refuse he kept lying around on the off-chance he might need it.

Megatron realized he was staring and mumbled his thanks, producing his own pad from subspace and tugging the tiny cable coiled up inside it free. It was the work of a moment to transfer the whole of the files to the new pad and he presented it to Drift, who struggled half-upright to accept it before flopping backwards in exhaustion.

“Okay,” he said, clutching the pad. “Okay, I’ll stay.”

“Good kid,” said Ratchet. “Get some rest.”

“You’ll visit me, right?” said Drift, optics fixing on Ratchet and something unreadable passing across his face. “If…you’re not busy?”

Ratchet nodded, his smile tight and masklike, “I will.”

The promise seemed to soothe Drift and he settled back, pad resting on his chassis and optics fading offline.

“Come on,” said Ratchet, shoving past Megatron into the receiving room. “We need to get going.”

“All in good time,” said Wing, emerging after them and shutting the door to the berthroom. His voice was pleasant, but with a hint of steel underneath. “I suspect you have not fueled since Polyhex and the mountains are quite the strain on grounders. Sit, I’ll bring energon.”

“I think you’ve done quite enough,” said Ratchet.

Wing ignored him, producing a cube of energon and four cups from the small cabinet on the wall. “Sit.”

Megatron and Perceptor both did so, and after a few moments of mulish waffling, Ratchet followed. Wing distributed the glasses and poured the energon and Megatron found himself glad of the energy, clean and crackling in his intakes and tinged with unfamiliar minerals, warming the gaping void that threatened when he took his mind from their task. A constant marvel, the way that life continued, the fuel pump pushing energon, the pistons firing, the circuits in the processor crackling, when all it seemed was that the spark might go out.

“Now,” said Wing, seating himself and taking a sip of his own energon. “You are headed for Upper Tetrahex. There is a small network of tunnels beneath the Temple, dry energon veins, that can be used to access that level of the city without being detected.”

“You’re just all sorts of help, aren’t you?” said Ratchet, nursing his cup.

“What I wish to know,” said Wing, “is why you are you are heading there in the first place.” He looked to Perceptor, “You were quite oblique about the whole thing when you sent word.”

“We are looking for Senator Shockwave,” said Perceptor. “He, and by extension a piece of highly sensitive information, have gone missing, and we fear the worst. A…friend of his informed us that he keeps a set of apartments in Upper Tetrahex. We hoped to find him, or at least clues concerning his disappearance.”

Wing sat back in his seat and regarded them. “It is true that Shockwave sometimes comes here. He is discreet of course but this city is tightly linked and word travels fast. But I have not heard news of his presence for more than half a metacycle.” He looked thoughtful. “Though Dai Atlas did not see fit to notify me that such a thing had occurred.” At Megatron’s puzzled expression he clarified, “I am former military; Dai Atlas was my mentor before I chose discharge and the temple vows.” A dark look passed over his face. “Let us only say that it was perhaps a mercy that Nova Prime vanished when he did.”

Wing shook his helm sharply, “Nevertheless, if Dai Atlas did not inform me he must have feared that the communication channels might be compromised. Perhaps Shockwave’s disappearance heralds something far worse to come.”

Ratchet drained the rest of his energon and set his cup aside. “We don’t have time for quibbling over portents or omens. You mentioned tunnels?”

Wing gave him an exasperated look, but then appeared to change his mind. “Very well, finish your energon and I will escort you there. Perceptor knows how to reach me if you encounter trouble.” He paused. “Or after you return to Polyhex, should you be interested in word of the goings-on here.”

Megatron hastily drank the rest of his energon and set the cup aside before Ratchet could gather himself for a retort. “Thank you, we are in your debt.”

Wing guided them down the winding path from which they had come and beyond, into underground levels, some bearing the familiar marks of axe and pick carved into the steel-silver of the walls, but others worn slick and smooth in a way that Megatron had rarely seen but for the deepest depths to which he had ranged as a miner; worn by liquid, by energon, eons of pressure and flow, primordial veins of life. He reached up and ran his hand along the wall as they moved downwards and found it as glossy and pleasing to the touch as the painted expanse of Optimus’s thigh beneath his palm. His spark contracted sharply and he withdrew, turning his attention to the path before them. The mersennes fixed to their helms cast multicolored light and shadows as they moved beyond the reach of the last of the crude lights embedded in the walls.

“Continue down this tunnel until you come to a fork,” said Wing, the planes of his face cut sharper by the harsh angle of the light from his helm. “Take the left path. It will lead you back to the surface, into a small statue garden in Upper Tetrahex. Shockwave’s apartments should not be far from there.”

Megatron made a small gesture of respect and Perceptor murmured his thanks. Ratchet did not stop once he’d been given the instructions, the blue pinpoint of his mersenne a tiny beacon in the dark as he vanished into the tunnel and Megatron hurried to keep up.

The tunnel stretched on for an indeterminate length, the darkness and dead air oppressive, and Megatron activated his supplementary vents, shunting away the gathering heat. Behind him he could hear Perceptor panting, an involuntary response to cool his larger engines. Ahead Ratchet made no sound, either from stubbornness or the greater efficiency of his systems.

“How much further?” said Perceptor at last, his voice tight and strained.

“Hopefully soon,” said Megatron. “The floor is a half-percent positive gradient. We are moving towards the surface, only slowly.”

“Here’s the fork,” said Ratchet suddenly, a hollow echo. Metal scraped and his mersenne winked in and out of existence as he bent to examine the paths leading into both. “No signs of passage, but I suppose the guardian of metaphysical nonsense can be trusted.” He veered to the left and Megatron followed him.

“A moment,” gasped Perceptor, pausing behind them, “I need a—” His legs folded beneath him and he sat down suddenly, the yellow light at his helm bobbing as he panted.

Ratchet was beside him in an instant, shoving past Megatron and kneeling to examine him. His scanners flashed green, “Slag it all, he’s overheating. He doesn’t have the vent capacity to be this far underground.”

“My apologies,” said Perceptor, wheezing. “I will be fine, I only need a—”

“Can it,” said Ratchet and Perceptor slumped forward, panting hard. Ratchet produced a small dented canister from his subspace. “Coolant, drink it. I’ll drain off a little of the old stuff in your lines. It should be enough for a stopgap measure.”

He did something that Megatron could not see and Perceptor winced, but obediently lifted the canister and drank. Restless and strangely aggravated, Megatron stepped aside to give them space and loosened the mag-clamps of his helmet. Tugging it free, he allowed his sensory panels to unfurl and activated his scanners.

The smooth surfaces of the walls interfered with his echolocatory capacity, but he could still determine their approximate depth and the length of the tunnel through which they traveled. “Not much further,” he said.

“Up,” said Ratchet, tugging on Perceptor, who lurched to his feet with a groan and tottered forward a few steps.

Megatron jammed his helmet back in place and moved to take Perceptor, slinging one of the mech’s long arms over his shoulder, and pressed on up the steepening path.

At last a whisp of breeze, curling through the stagnant air of the tunnel and bringing with it a hint of the cool of the surface. It lit Megatron’s chemosensors like a plasma bolt and he surged forward, pistons firing as he half-dragged Perceptor, optics unseeing as he felt his way forward, every bit the creature of depths and darkness that he had been forged to be.

He supposed, in a vague way, that he should disdain the feeling of rightness that came from fulfilling his purpose as internalized functionalist propaganda. Yet at that moment, as they clambered upwards, into open air, it felt as much a victory as the first stumbling poem he had ever penned, a clumsy hash of glyphs, hacking a rudimentary rhyme scheme from the pitiful handfuls of symbols he had been given, for no other reason than because he could.

He straighted as they emerged from the tunnel, allowing Perceptor to slip to the ground, where he rested, panting, as he surveyed the garden into which they’d emerged.

It had been Bulkhead, young and self-effacing, who sometimes scribbled idly on the walls of the tunnels when they’d been given a breather, who had saved his shanix for the trip to Iacon’s museums. He’d told Megatron, in hushed, reverent tones, of the hunks of statuary and etchings, still rimed with rust, beautiful and terrible relics from the time of the Knights of Cybertron. But telling and seeing were quite different.

A tall, regal fabrication of a warrior stood before them, sword unsheathed and arm uplifted, an imitation of a Minicon perched atop it, wings outspread as though to take flight. The optics of the Minicon were drilled though the helm of the statue and caught the light, creating the eerie illusion of life. Beyond it a dry fountain, its open bowl shaped from the spread cup of Primus’s wing arrays, crowned the garden, surrounded by other, scattered statues.

Beside Megatron, Perceptor bent at the waist, drawing in deep gulps of air while Ratchet muttered to himself. Beyond the garden he could see the narrow winding streets and the steep, stacked buildings, built or braced into the side of the mountain.

“Come on,” Ratchet said, clapping Perceptor on the pauldron, “it’s not far.”

The streets of Upper Tetrahex were eerily empty, only the odd mechanism wandering here and there to witness their awkward march and Megatron found himself strangely relieved by the lack of prying optics, a keen awareness of his own exhaustion and the grit that lined the grooves of his plating suffusing him. Ratchet led them to a long, low building, mumbling under his breath as he counted dark windows.

“There it is,” he said suddenly. “Third from the top left. Slagger would have a top room. Wish we’d brought Optimus. Fragger can climb anything.”

Megatron ignored the deliberate use of the present tense. “Or perhaps we could take a novel approach and use the front door?”

Ratchet shot him an exasperated look, but their brewing squabble was interrupted by Perceptor, who appeared to have had enough and was lurching for the door of the building without a backward glance. Megatron hurried to keep up with him.

The inside of the building was dimly lit and did not thankfully display any evident security. The doors were unmarked, no doubt at the behest of the vastly wealthy who paid for discretion as well as privacy, but they found their way to the room with little difficulty. Ratchet ran his hand down the smooth metal of the door, helm cocked as he listened and scanned. “Hard to say for sure, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone inside. In fact it doesn’t seem like anyone’s come or gone for some time.”

“Open it anyway,” said Megatron. “Whether or not Shockwave can be produced, there may be information we can glean.”

Ratchet nodded and transmitted the code, the locking mechanism lighting up and the door sliding back, though the interior lights themselves did not activate. The doorway yawned, a dark crack of danger and possibility and Megatron found himself wondering again how he’d come to be here.

“Into the breach,” said Ratchet, giving him a crooked smile and Megatron squared his shoulders and stepped within.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the curious, "mersenne" is a reference to the numbers known as "Mersenne Primes".


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here you are, dear readers. New information is uncovered, as are new mysteries. It should also be noted that I am BS-ing the timeline more than a little regarding specific dates for when Tailgate got himself lost in that hole, though the approximate order of events up until the assassination of Nominus Prime remains the same. Happy reading as always and I'm glad everyone is enjoying this. :3

Shockwave’s apartments were Spartan in the way that bespoke elegance, refinement, and the sort of wealth that was beyond Megatron’s comprehension. Artwork on the walls, jagged, abstract images of horror and eroticism that would have been scorned by the state-sanctioned artists, furniture of an antique and ornate style that had been popular before the rise of Functionism, the elegant, flowing lines a stark contrast to the boxy, sturdy pieces that populated Megatron’s own hab-suite. The walls themselves were pale, giving the place an expansive feel despite the darkness; he doubted those like Shockwave concerned themselves with the accumulation of dirt.

“No lights,” he said quietly, as Perceptor began to grope the wall for a control panel. “No need to alert anyone from outside that we are here.”

The door whispered shut behind them, leaving them in darkness, and Megatron heard the quiet whirr and click as his optics adjusted. There was a console on the far wall, its screen black and silent.

“Check the berthrooms,” he said, “but I am fairly certain that is what we are looking for.”

“I’ll do it,” said Ratchet. “Perceptor, you get your wheels turning on bypassing Shockwave’s security.”

Perceptor obeyed, unwinding a small cable from his side and setting his hands to the dark console. The screen flashed to life and began to scroll with code.

“All clear,” said Ratchet, returning to the main room. “No consoles, no assassins hiding in the shadows, nothing except some datapads of no discernible value.” He made a face. “Shockwave’s taste in reading material is atrocious.”

Megatron did not ask him to elaborate. “Can you bypass Shockwave’s firewalls?”

“Give me a moment,” said Perceptor absently. His optics flicked back and forth across the screen as he manipulated the touch interface. “It’s secure, but not as secure as I might expect. Then again, perhaps Shockwave relied on the remoteness of its location as an additional barrier.”

“Perhaps,” said Megatron. The stagnant air in the apartment, like a sealed-off mine, set him on edge and he resisted the urge to pace. “Can you find the copy of the code?”

“I am searching for it now,” said Perceptor. “The query is nearly complete. It really is quite a shame that Shockwave decided to devote himself full-time to politics, some of these primer designs are—that’s peculiar.”

“What?” said Ratchet, pushing over to stand beside Megatron.

Perceptor frowned at the screen, “I cross-referenced with the BMS coding region from the code copied from Optimus, but I received no hits. The code is not showing up on the drives.”

“Which subcategories are you searching?” said Ratchet.

“All of them,” said Perceptor. “There were no matches in Shockwave’s coding files, or anywhere else.”

“What about that one?” said Ratchet, jabbing a finger at the screen and a heading marked ‘Interface Supplemental Material’ in stark, glowing glyphs.

Perceptor made a small sputtering noise, as though his intakes were backing up. “It was included in the system wide search of course but I really don’t think—”

“Open it,” said Ratchet, scowling.

Perceptor gave Megatron a helpless look but obeyed.

The navigation screen for the drive flashed up, helpfully displaying its contents as a series of convenient, miniature holo-images. Megatron’s orbital ridges shot skywards and Perceptor hunched over the console, looking miserable.

“Fragging, slippery, _politicians_ ,” grumbled Ratchet, scanning over the images. “It’s not here, next group.”

“Ratchet…”

“ _Next group._ ”

Perceptor made a miserable noise and swept his palm across the touch interface. A new screen of images blinked into view and Ratchet snapped “Next group.” Another set and his arm shot forward, pointing out a frozen holoshot of a hefty, construction-frame mechanism, helm thrown back as he rode the spike of a jet half his size, face caught in a bizarre contortion from the frozen video file. “That one,” said Ratchet.

“How can you tell?” said Perceptor, curiosity overwhelming his embarrassment for the moment. “It doesn’t look any different from the others.”

“Check the file size,” said Ratchet, his tone confident. “Even at the highest resolution that exists, there’s no interface holo-vid on Cybertron that big. It’s a shell. Open the file in the coding map program.”

Perceptor did so and a huge coding file sprang up on the page. Perceptor scanned over it eagerly before his face fell. “This isn’t it.” His optics widened, “But this…Great Primus.”

“What is it?” said Ratchet.

“A virus,” said Perceptor, solemn and subdued.

Ratchet tensed, “What does it do?”

“I cannot be sure precisely, but if I recognize this particular coding region from my coursework, it is designed to replicate and spread rapidly through a mechanism’s systems. Primus, if Shockwave has something like this on his drives…”

“Keep searching,” said Ratchet. “There may be others.”

“Er,” said Perceptor, even as he continued to pan through the files. “How exactly did you come to be familiar with the average size of an interface holo-vid?”

“I wasn’t satisfied with the medical program in Polyhex,” said Ratchet absently, his optics flicking back and forth across the screen. “I scraped together the extra shanix for the Institute for Higher Programming by producing interface vids on at home and uploading them to…less than reputable networks. I know exactly how much filespace it takes for high-definition, three-dimensional graphics.”

Perceptor jerked and stared at him. “On that note,” Ratchet said “If I ever discover any of you trading in out-of-production interface vids starring a certain ‘Cool Hand Lube’, I promise I will make your lives very miserable.”

Perceptor whipped his optics back to the screen and Megatron hid a smile.

The next file, an inverted minibot with a spike in his mouth, proved to house a list of high-ranking politicians helpfully labeled with their most embarrassing peccadilloes. The handful that followed contained everything from tunnel maps of several of Cybertron’s major cities, to bizarre holo-images of organic life that made Megatron’s head spin, yet there was still no sign of the code they sought. Perceptor, embarrassment seeming long since forgotten, plowed along gamely, responding on near-automatic to Ratchet’s droned instructions.

Left at loose ends, Megatron rubbed a hand across his face, optics sliding across the graphic, high-speed slideshow. He was actually mildly impressed at the vast repository amassed on the drive. Even Impactor, who’d deigned to share his not-insubstantial stash, the results of eons of saving and stealing, had only a fraction of this. And where better to hide one’s dirty little secrets, then well, among a larger group of dirty little secrets?

Optics slightly out of focus, processor wandering, something pinged at his senses. Frowning, he held up a hand, stopping Perceptor just as he was about to open a file of two entwined femmes, and pointed. “Wait, what about that one?”

Ratchet frowned, dropping his optics to examine the file Megatron had indicated, and sucked in a bit of air. “Slagging—that’s…that’s Blurr.”

The racer was on his back, endlessly long legs spread open, optics canted to the side and fingers thrust inside his leaking valve. Tame perhaps, in light of the circus of eroticism around it, but there was a strange and vulnerable expression on Blurr’s face that struck a queer chord in Megatron’s spark.

He ached for Optimus.

Perceptor booted up the file and Ratchet needed no more than a long, searching glance before he smiled grimly, “Got it.”

“What do we do with it?” said Megatron.

“Wipe the file,” said Ratchet immediately. “I have a copy of my own buried on my internal drives, but we don’t want to leave extras floating around.”

“What about…the rest of them?” said Perceptor, hesitant.

Ratchet frowned, and Megatron could already see the gears in his mind turning, weighing the relative value of possessing such sensitive information or perhaps even destroying it forever and spoke up, “Leave them.”

Ratchet tensed and looked at him, “Leave them?”

“Some of the files may be too valuable to destroy,” said Megatron. “But it would be far too dangerous to copy them and take them with us. If we were captured or questioned, we might be searched. For now, I say leave them, and trust that Shockwave’s security measures will hold.”

Ratchet’s face twisted in a frown, but he nodded at last, “Fine, just wipe the code from Optimus for now.”

Perceptor moved to obey but as he did so Ratchet reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder, “Wait a moment. Check the logs before you do.”

Perceptor gave him a curious look, but complied and the usage log sprang up. There was the neat line of glyphs indicating when the code had been placed on the system, several lines following it for a pattern of usage—Shockwave must have been examining it—and then…

Perceptor let out a noise of alarm, “There an indication of a download here. Someone made a copy.”

Ratchet cursed softly, “Any clue as to whom?”

Perceptor shook his head, “Whomever it was, they didn’t use Shockwave’s login credentials. But someone has it.”

Megatron’s tank churned, but he straightened. “It does not change our immediate plans. Wipe the code, and let us return to Iacon. I think we have lingered here long enough.”

If he still lived, and Megatron ruthlessly squelched the leap in his spark at the possibility, they needed to find Optimus.

Though, there was no reason not to arm themselves sufficiently.

“Take a copy of the rust-list on the Senators,” he said.

Ratchet shot him an impressed look and smiled.

 

It took Optimus an embarrassingly long time to gather his wits, staring at Tailgate as he struggled to form a coherent sentence. At last he spoke, slow and deliberate, testing, “I presume you are speaking of the _Ark-1_?”

Tailgate cocked his head in curiosity, “Far as I know, she is the only one?” He gave a little nervous laugh, “That is unless I’ve been down here a little longer than I thought?”

“Was your chronometer damaged in the fall?”

“Yeah, it went right to pieces, but I figure it can’t have been that long. I missed the launch then, didn’t I?”

“Indeed,” said Optimus. “The launch of the _Ark-1_ for the purpose of exploring the Benzuli Expanse occurred during First Cycle 086.” He paused, “It is currently Second Cycle 013.”

Tailgate stiffened, “That’s…that’s impossible.”

Optimus tapped the inside of his wrist to bring up a miniature holo-display of his own chronometer and displayed it.

Tailgate stared at him, “But that would mean I’ve been down here for—oh Primus Below.” He remained frozen, but his energy field spiked in alarm.

“Are you alright?” said Optimus, discomfited.

“Well,” said Tailgate. “I missed my shift. All my shifts. And my uh, I’m guessing they gave my hab-suite away to somebody else. And my stuff.”

“That is…likely,” said Optimus delicately. “But do not concern yourself overmuch. I will see to it that you are provided with fuel and a place to stay until things can be sorted out.”

Tailgate slumped, staring off into the middle distance, “I guess they didn’t need me quite as much as I thought they did.”

“I am certain that your role was of no less importance because of the accident,” said Optimus firmly. “What was your given assignment?”

Tailgate’s gaze slid over to the partially obscured glyphs painted on his forearm guard. “Disposal,” he said. “Bomb…explosive, disposal.”

Optimus’s orbital ride rose and he frowned. Reaching forward, he plucked a flaking chip of paint from Tailgate’s forearm guard and held it up. “Are you quite certain? Because while it has been some time since I have seen it on a living mechanism, I am fairly sure that this particular paint formulation and style of glyphs were most commonly used on cleaning mechanisms in Iacon.”

Tailgate shrank under his stare, “I…”

“I do not appreciate prevarication.”

“They were already….” Tailgate hunched. “I was supposed to flush the pipes on her before takeoff, alright? But they were already moving towards cleaning drones rather than disposables. The AI was good enough that you could program ‘em and go, right? No need for pesky, sparked mechanisms complaining all the time. Drip-Pan, he was always warning us: ‘Soon as they get a drone that can do our job faster, better than us, we’re sunk. Straight into the recycling smelter.’” He shrugged helplessly and looked at Optimus. “It’s been a long time, maybe things are different, but are you gonna tell me what they do with mechanisms that have outlived their function in Second Cycle 013?”

Optimus’s mouth went tight, but he remained silent. Tailgate shook his head and laughed humorlessly. “Maybe I should just stay down here and let time finish the job.”

“Unacceptable,” said Optimus, unable to stop himself, the deep core programming that had proceeded any modifications by the Matrix, _to protect and to serve_ , rallying to the surface. “We are getting out of here. We are going to find my friends.” Find Megatron, his aching spark pleaded silently. “We are going to deal with the assassination attempt that just occurred. We will wrangle any potential fallout around your continued functioning later, even if it means I must issue an official ‘Change of Function’ decree and appoint you my secretary.”

Tailgate looked at him as though he’d done something as disturbing as allow a miniature mechanism to burst out of his chassis. “Why would anyone care about you issuing some decree? You some kind of bigwig in the Senate or something like that?”

“Something like that,” said Optimus dryly. Shifting forward into the gaping hole above them, he staggered to his feet and reached down, hefting Tailgate up and bracing him on the side of his pelvic span. Behind his helm, the newspark peeped and shifted. He passed the blaster to Tailgate, “Hold this. Don’t pull the trigger. Hang on tight”

Tailgate took it as though he’d been given something that might explode at any moment and squeaked as Optimus took a little running start at the wall and leapt up, fingers biting into the crumbling substrate and feet kicking out as he braced himself against wall and stalactite and began to haul them upwards.

It took several tries as the metal in Optimus’s grip crumbled and and he slid back down, bumping and squashing Tailgate as he tried to make the ascension one-handed. The newspark peeped and buzzed its annoyance at his ungainly attempts directly in his audio sensors. But at last he got a firmer handhold and pulled them from the sinkhole with an undignified kick and general flailing of limbs. Rolling to his feet, he scooped up Tailgate from where he had dropped him and took the blaster back from him. Situating the minibot on his hip, he took off towards the edge of the plateau, swinging wide to avoid the buildings the way he had come, heading southwards towards Iacon.

The Senate was going to be in for quite a surprise.

\--

`Incoming Transmission`

`To: Cog in the Machine Transport, Inc., Polyhex`

`From: Fixit, CMO, Deltaran Medical Facility (DMF), Rodion`

`Subj: Repair Nanite Shipment`

`The shipment of unprogrammed repair nanites is now forty-six megacycles overdue from projected shipping time. Supplies are running low, we need those transfusion units. Should this prove a reoccurring problem, the facility will utilize an alternative transport company.`


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fate of a player is revealed and plot elements begin to unfold. Many thanks to [Reyairia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Reyairia/) for her beta-work and for putting up with my whining while I wrote the chapter. Happy reading as always and thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm. :3
> 
> And most importantly, I've added tags but BE ADVISED, the second half of this chapter gets pretty hairy. There is porn yes, and it is plot-critical, but it is not happy porn. Hope it doesn't take anyone off guard.

Ratchet insisted that they stop off at his clinic in Polyhex on the way back to Iacon. Something about needing to check his messages. When Perceptor pointed out that basic, encrypted, high speed wireless capability rendered Ratchet capable of checking his messages even from the other side of the planet, Ratchet began to reminisce about how sometimes he missed making interface holo-vids and inquiring whether the two of them had any suggestions for future scenarios. This resulted in Perceptor speeding towards Polyhex with a haste of which Megatron hadn’t known him to be capable.

The door to Ratchet’s clinic appeared intact, no signs of entry, forced or otherwise, though the small message attached to the door had been played repeatedly, no doubt by his usual patients. Ratchet disengaged the locks and shoved the door aside, palming the lights as he did so. The fixtures flickered on, slow and piecemeal, throwing a slight greenish cast over everything. Ratchet brushed past the med-berths and made for his office. 

Megatron glanced outside, making note of the handful of so-called ‘undesirables’, some walking the nearly empty street, others crouched in small recessed doorways. He met the optics of one, the large toothed flanges curving over his back rendering his alt mode a mystery, hunched before a pawnshop, not yet open for business, across the way. The mechanism smiled wryly at him and Megatron dipped his helm in acknowledgement before sliding the door shut and securing it.

Perceptor was flopped down on one of the medberths, optics offline and looking utterly exhausted. Megatron considered rousing him, but he wasn’t entirely sure when they’d next be able to rest, or whether Perceptor would be safe to return to his own, surely pleasant, quarters, so Megatron crept as quietly as he was able towards Ratchet’s office.

Ratchet was indeed bent over his console, frowning at a message displayed on the screen. Megatron couldn’t decipher the shorthand system, though he’d be the first to admit his language modules were anything but up to date, but he recognized the glyph markers for ‘urgent’. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“A message from the DMF,” said Ratchet, half-distracted as he read. “Apparently there’s been a delay on their usual nanite shipment and they’re running out. Fixit’s doing a survey of those of us with private practices, to see if we have any spare transfusion units on hand.” He snorted. “Funny, really. The units that I get are usually contaminated or defective in some way. I gotta clean or reprogram them before they’re fit for use. Desperate times I suppose.”

“I suppose,” said Megatron. “Should you contact him?”

“Probably,” said Ratchet. “Be good to establish that I’m here in Polyhex anyway. Who knows? Maybe no one of any note will have noticed I left.” He tapped the console smartly and a comlink connection sprang up, revealing a mech with red, prominent helm fins. “Fixit,” said Ratchet.

Fixit blinked at him. “Ratchet?” he said, before his face brightened. “Oh, my mistake, I forgot to message you when the shipment arrived. It got in at the very beginning of this oncycle. I do appreciate you contacting me regarding the units though.”

“I figured you must really have been in a pinch if you were contacting me,” said Ratchet dryly.

Fixit laughed, “Our stocks haven’t been that low since the epidemic in 019. I’d say a pinch is putting it mildly.”

“Glad to hear the shipment finally came through then.”

“Oh the company head and I have had _words_ over that, believe you me,” said Fixit, shaking his helm. “He kept insisting that it was enroute and that his delivery mech must have gotten held up somewhere. Not that he could say _where_. Besides, he’s the one in charge of the company, I’m not gonna blame the poor mook transporting the shipment because some higher-up got his wires crossed.”

“Well at least if they got their slag sorted you won’t have to find a new company.”

Fixit made a small expression of distaste. “Eh, I might look into a new one anyway, just on principle. Seems like this one’s been going downhill.”

Ratchet frowned, “How so?”

“Well their employee pool for one,” said Fixit. “Not exactly a good sign when a company starts hiring ex-convicts. Take the driver of that runaway transport for instance. Barely even looked like a mechanism anymore.” Fixit gave a slight shudder, “Haven’t seen an Empurata victim since medical school. They’re fragging unsettling.”

Ratchet’s orbital ridge rose and he visibly bit back the urge to comment. “I’ll keep that in mind should I find myself in need of a transport service,” he said finally, tone edged.

Fixit shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I suppose everyone has to make a living,” he said. “Anyway, I should get back to my shift, everyone’s running around like Sharkticons with their tails pulled trying to get the units where they need to go.” More sure now that he was back on familiar, neutral ground, he nodded to Rachet. “Thanks again for getting back to me about the units. I mean it.”

Ratchet let out a deep sigh, “Yeah, sure. I got your back, you know that.”

“See you then. Contact me during offcycle if you…I don’t know, want to go out sometime again. Pharma’d probably join us if I asked.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Ratchet, and the screen went blank. Sighing, he leaned against the console. “Well that kills my idea that Optimus would have tried contacting me through the clinic commline.”

“Wouldn’t that be less secure?” said Megatron.

Ratchet smiled wryly. “You weren’t around for Orion’s big syk-ring bust in 075. The ringleaders nabbed him and stuffed him in a room six levels under the surface. But one of the punks guarding him was on the outs with his lover. Orion managed to convince him that a box of high-end energon gels would do the trick.” Ratchet’s optics twinkled, “Then he recommended a company and gave the mook Springarm’s comlink info.”

Megatron coughed, trying to cover a laugh. Ratchet grinned at him before sobering, “What I’m trying to say is don’t give up too easy. Optimus isn’t stupid, and he’s got Unicron’s own luck.”

“Should we try comming him?” said Megatron.

Ratchet frowned. “I don’t think so, not yet. He’ll contact us if he can, I’m certain of it. Let’s take a brief cruise down to the Grand Imperium though. There’s an oil house across the way where you won’t stand out too much. We can hunker down there and see if we can get some info.”

Megatron nodded, “I’ll get Perceptor up.”

Ratchet paused a moment, before shaking his helm sharply. “Something is bothering me.”

“What in particular?”

“Fixit’s right in a sense, when he said he hadn’t seen an Empurata victim since medical school. It’s a slagging expensive procedure to go through just for the sake of punishment. Archaic too.” Ratchet scowled, “I think the last one I saw was a warden who works in Orion’s old precinct.”

“Perhaps he was subject to a long sentence and recently released?” said Megatron.

“Probably,” said Ratchet, rummaging through one of his cabinets and stuffing a handful of medical supplies into his subspace. “Would explain why he was stuck working for a transport company, the poor slagger. I wonder what he used to do?”

Megatron shrugged, “I think a more interesting question is: who was he?”

“Fair point,” said Ratchet straightening. “But we’ll never find out hanging around here. Let’s head out.”

 

The beat of the music throbbed through the floor, sending mild vibrations up through the berth and across Blurr’s plating. He tipped his cube of energon back and forth and watched it slosh. He hadn’t bothered activating the lights. The warm buzz of high grade hummed through his systems, strong, but not nearly strong enough.

He scowled at the cube and sighed.

He’d spent that offcycle prowling the floor of the club, determined to snag a ‘face, but each time he’d had a mech or femme pressed up against him he’d been overcome with a frustrating sense of boredom. And so he was here, alone in the dark on a berth that smelled of sour high grade, nursing a sub-par drink and marinating in his thoughts.

He should have gone to a hotel, somewhere with proper washracks and room service, made an evening of it if he was going to spend the whole offcycle being useless and maudlin.

Even the idea of a night run, usually the quickest and easiest way to lift his mood, sounded far too exhausting a prospect. Blurr drained the contents of his cube and tossed it aside. It hit the wall with a clunk and bounced out of sight. Curling on his side, he tucked his legs up towards his chassis and offlined his optics.

A slight rattle at the door, and it slid open. A slash of yellow light fell across him, activating his pineal sensors, but he kept his optics offline. Probably the ghostly quiet little femme that managed the rooms above the club. “You can bring another cube,” Blurr said. “Put it on my tab.”

There was a long silence. The door slid shut, blotting out the light. “Perhaps I should have brought some of my own,” said a deep, even voice. “If you are going to pickle your processor, you might as well do so with quality stock.”

Blurr went rigid. Optics flashing on, he bolted up in the berth. Across the room, Shockwave regarded him mildly.

Except, no, this wasn’t Shockwave, _couldn’t_ be Shockwave, voice and EM field signature and the way Blurr’s spark leapt in his chassis be slagged. Gone were the sharp features and soft blue optics, replaced by a boxy structure that could only be charitably called a helm. His paintjob was flat and dim in the low light, but the wavelength input from Blurr’s optics indicated he’d been repainted, monotone purple, with none of the fashionable accents he’d favored before, and a single, yellow optic blazed from the center of his featureless face.

“You,” Blurr choked, “what the slag happened to you?”

Shockwave cocked his helm at him, and Blurr’s tank churned at the familiar gesture even as his spark pulsed with unease at the cold curiosity in Shockwave’s EM field. “I should think,” said Shockwave. “That would be obvious.”

Blurr had only heard the word whispered, quietly spat with a warding gesture and flicker of the sort of fear generally inspired by stories of Dwellers and sparkeaters. “What,” he managed. “What did you _do_?”

“Do?”

“Yes do!” shouted Blurr, jumping up from the berth. “You—you were always getting in their way! What line did you cross this time? I told you! I told they’d get you, but you, you wouldn’t listen!” His hands shook and he wished he had not already flung away his cube. “You—you fragging glitch-headed slagger!”

Shockwave’s EM field did not even flicker. He watched Blurr rage and circle the tiny room, expression unchanging. And of course it was unchanging because they’d taken his _fragging head_ and Blurr couldn’t stop swearing because if he did he was going to scream and scream and scream—

Shockwave caught his hands as he passed, drawing him over, and Primus Below even those were different, not the monstrous claws that Blurr had seen on the precinct warden that one time he’d ended up in the drunk tank, but it looked like he might have hacked them off and attached a new set himself, blunt and utilitarian. The perfect, Functionist machine and Blurr was torn between ripping himself free in horror and throwing himself on Shockwave’s chassis and begging him to tell him it was some kind of horrifying joke.

“Calm yourself,” said Shockwave, and the mild, even tone of his voice raised Blurr’s hackles, setting his plating on edge. “I believe this is for the best.”

“ _The best?_ ” said Blurr. “How the slag is something like this for the best?”

“I still function,” said Shockwave. “My faculties are all in working order. Further, my processor is clearer than it has been in vorns. Frankly I fail to comprehend why you are so hysterical.”

“Why am I _hysterical_?” said Blurr, optics wide in horror and disbelief. “They…they _maimed_ you and I’m supposed to be calm?”

“To the contrary,” said Shockwave. “They freed me. Whatever their intention, I am still myself. Indeed, perhaps I should be grateful to them for clearing away some…extraneous elements. Now I can go forward with a clear direction and priorities.”

Blurr had no idea what Shockwave was talking about, but something about his words and tone made Blurr’s tank lurch. “What kind of…extraneous elements?” he said.

Shockwave’s single, unnerving optic focused back on Blurr and his energy field flickered for the first time since he’d entered the room, mild amusement, as though Blurr had told a little joke. “Ah, you fear my newfound lease on life will not include yourself?” He released on of Blurr’s hands and ran an appreciative touch down his flank. Or at least it should have felt like an appreciative touch, but the lack of emotional input, like being touched by a drone or a dead mechanism, made Blurr want to purge his tanks.

“No, I—” a wave of nausea swamped him, systems charged and jittery from too much high grade. Shockwave sought between his legs and Blurr jerked, hunching into him. “Shockwave—”

“Is this not what you want?” said Shockwave, sounding as though he were asking Blurr if he might prefer midgrade or engex. He probed into the seams of Blurr’s pelvic span, reaching unerringly for a sensitive spot and Blurr gasped, clutching at his forearms, processor spinning as his interface hatch slid back. “I assure you, I am still fully functional in that regard.”

“I—” said Blurr, but one of those blunt fingers pushed inside him and his valve was wet and aching already from the low-level frustration all offcycle and he could only moan.

Shockwave maneuvered Blurr back onto the berth, and slag it all the body and EM field were alien but his touch was as familiar as ever, skilled and knowledgeable, opening Blurr up, disassembling him just as surely as he had that first time, after the race in Altihex, when he’d spent most of the afterparty turning aside Blurr’s cocky teasing, until Blurr had followed him back to his quarters and Shockwave had snapped and dragged him inside and proceeded to spend the next cycle and a half turning Blurr inside out.

Blurr’s spike pressurized in a rush, and Shockwave gave the tip a fond, gentle pinch, watching him as he bucked. “Not this, I think.” His fingers hooked inside Blurr’s valve, thumb pressing hard on the exterior sensors on the rim, and Blurr gasped, helm shoved back against the berth, dorsal struts bowing, legs tightening over Shockwave’s pelvic span.

“In,” he panted, clawing at the berth. “Inside.”

Shockwave hummed to himself, “All in good time.”

Blurr groaned, “You are such a slagger.”

Shockwave actually chuckled dryly and Blurr’s spark twisted in something like relief. “Very well. If you are so eager, perhaps you should take the lead.”

Blurr barely had time to comprehend what he meant before Shockwave was rolling them, a mountain of moving metal beneath him. Shockwave lifted him up and Blurr dropped forward, bracing himself on Shockwave’s not-insubstantial chassis, as he felt Shockwave’s spike search and find.

“There we are,” said Shockwave, stroking his helm fins, his EM field still static, calm, as though he did not have his spike inside Blurr, pressing against sensor nodes and setting off a cascade of charge in his valve. “I am at your disposal.”

Shaking, Blurr tried to pull himself together. Shifting to brace himself on the berth, he rose and thrust back down.

It didn’t take much, he’d been charged up for breems now and he found himself tripping into overload in an embarrassingly short time, valve clenching tight and vision blurring to static around the edges. Shockwave patted his thigh, still eerily calm.

“Keep going.”

Trembling, Blurr dragged himself back up and began to ride Shockwave in earnest. His chronometer glitched from the charge and time seemed to warp and dilate, punctuated by the convulsion of overload, his focus narrowing to the spike inside him, to Shockwave’s unwavering yellow gaze, the strange, flat flicker of his EM field.

“Yes,” murmured Shockwave. “You enjoy this, don’t you? I remember enjoying it.”

“What was that?” gasped Blurr.

“Nothing of import,” said Shockwave. His hand rose and caressed Blurr’s chassis. “This, I think.”

Blurr’s optics dilated and he yelped as he came down on Shockwave’s spike too hard, oversensitive in the wake of more overloads than he could remember. “What?”

“Your spark,” said Shockwave, still in that strange, calm voice.

Blurr’s spark whirled in panic, but his processor was still fuzzed with the remains of high grade and the kickback of overload and there was something inexorable about the pressure of Shockwave’s fingers. Blurr’s chassis split, flooding the room with light, blinding optics adjusted to the darkness.

“Very good,” said Shockwave, his own chassis flowering open. Blunt fingers slid up Blurr’s dorsal struts, nudging him downward, cramping his movements as Shockwave brought their sparks together.

The coronas brushed, and Blurr screamed.

Clawing at Shockwave’s frame, he tried to pull free, but the other mech’s grip was like iron, shoving him down and rolling them, weight crashing down on him. Pinned to the berth, Blurr could only shriek as the white-fire of Shockwave’s spark burned into him and he realized the true horror of what they’d done.

A yawning abyss, a vortex of emptiness, as though they’d seared out the bot inside the spark and left behind a shell. 

_Shadowplay_

He squirmed and fought, raking weals in that blasted purple paint as Shockwave thrust into him, and for the first time since he’d stuck his fingers in Blurr’s valve, Shockwave’s EM field blazed up, a pale shadow of the bot Blurr remembered, triumph and fierce joy and he couldn’t understand it, but his spark responded, remembered, and he cried out as he overloaded helplessly and Shockwave followed him, flooding his valve with transfluid.

Blurr went limp beneath him, optics fixed somewhere on the ceiling as Shockwave pulled out of him, chassis folding closed. Shockwave patted his thigh again and Blurr flinched.

“You did well,” said Shockwave pleasantly and Blurr nearly howled. “I feel as though this was a successful experiment.”

“What, what were you testing?” Blurr said.

“As you said,” said Shockwave. “Your continued usefulness as part of my routine.” He patted Blurr again. “It was as I hypothesized. Pleasant, but ultimately unnecessary.”

Blurr gaped at him, “You’re—you’re what? You’re leaving?”

Shockwave cocked his head at him, “I do not understand your distress. You have always valued your freedom. Now you may exercise that freedom even more widely than you already do.”

Something in Blurr’s core curled up at this, the casual dismissal and jab at his interfacing habits. “Get…get out,” he managed.

Shockwave inclined his head and rose, brushing a hand over his own plating to check for dents and smears of paint and Blurr took a small, petty satisfaction from the marks he’d left. “Of course,” Shockwave said. “Would you prefer to be paid for your services, or do you take sufficient satisfaction in the knowledge that you have contributed to an advancement of scientific understanding?”

Blurr had no idea what Shockwave was talking about, or why he was doing this, but his temper snapped. “Get out!” he bellowed. “Out! Out! I don’t ever want to fragging see you again!”

Shockwave slid the door open unhurriedly and made a gesture of farewell before letting the door slide shut behind him. 

Blurr curled up in the dark berth, valve aching, and stuffed a fist into his mouth to keep from screaming.


End file.
